In theory, Juno was able to keep track of such dangers; in practice, computer brains were sometimes slow to read complex meaning into complex data. That’s where human intuition came in so handy.
So Ben multi-tasked effortlessly, slipping from location to location with practised skill, all the while checking the cloud density and weather prediction models, just in case there was a storm on the way.
Nothing was amiss; the nearest predators were a herd of Juggernauts, nine klicks away, milling, not moving aggressively. He also saw Gryphons in flight. Buzzswarms over the Fetid Lake. A cloud shaped like a jigsaw. A hailstorm, brewing, but far away, over the area to the south of Xabar. A minor earth tremor, on the continent of Quetzalcoatl. A battle between rival gangs of arboreals in the canopy, three kilometres from here. Nothing to worry about.
On his staggering array of virtual screens, he saw all this, saw the Godzilla fall to the ground via Mia’s panoramic 3D camera, and also saw a half-dozen different versions of the moment from the body-armour cameras of everyone else at the scene.
Private Tonii Newton was flying up close to the action when the Godzilla fell. The huge beast was clearly shocked and baffled as the Soldiers fired batteries of low-level plasma blasts at its body, whilst simultaneously hurling grenades at its feet to rip away the ground it was standing on. And thus it fell, and the impact threw small creatures out of trees and made the earth shake.
Tonii’s helmet and body armour were drenched, as sheets of humidity splashed upwards from the undergrowth like rain in reverse. The Godzilla lay on the ground and roared with rage and, presumably, pain. The Soldiers’ plasma blasts had left burn marks on the vast creature’s scales. It should be unconscious but clearly it wasn’t.
Because a bare moment later the Godzilla leapt up in a single fast and fluid movement and was back on its feet, standing on bomb-ploughed soil, swinging the tail that was attached to the back of its head like a club. Tonii veered to one side, only just avoiding the blow, and his heart painfully skipped a beat.
“Phase One unsuccessful,” Helms murmured subvocally, as the Godzilla ploughed into the other two Soldiers and scattered them like skittles. The Soldiers bounced and crashed but suffered no lack of dignity.
“I’ve got it covered!” screamed Tonii.
“Do not use lethal force, repeat, do not use lethal force, please,” said Helms, in his infuriatingly calm voice.
Tonii wanted to weep with frustration. The creature was smashing one of his colleagues with its huge tail, he yearned to blow its body into pieces. “Fire a dart,” said Helms. Tonii fired his neural dart and it landed in the creature’s scales and shot thousands of volts into the monster’s body, to very little effect.
Tonii hovered, as the creature worked out where he was and what he had done. He could swear it was angry with him. But he held his position, hovering in mid-air, as the Godzilla steadied itself to strike.
It struck with its head-tail, and Tonii dodged skilfully out of the way, then flew back and hovered close to the beast, using himself as bait.
The Godzilla lunged again — but at precisely that moment the Dravens, remotely controlled by Ben Kirkham, soared swiftly downwards and opened their hulls. Sticky nets tumbled out and dropped over the Godzilla.
The vast beast promptly sweated corrosive acid from its pores, as all these New Amazon creatures tended to do, and the nets dissolved.
“Do not use lethal force, do not! Hold fire!” Helms repeated, as Tonii angrily turned his plasma gun to full blast. He could see the two skittled Soldiers were back on their feet, unscathed, but even so the killing rage was on him.
But by now the Godzilla was disorientated from its fall, and out of poison pus. So Tonii repented his rage, and switched the plasma gun off, and fired another neural dart, and this time the beast faltered.
Tonii was joined by the other Soldiers — two grunts and Major Molloy. They hovered in formation and fired more neural darts and this time the Godzilla spat and roared and the gale blew them out of the air.
Damn!
Tonii hit the ground hard, and bounced back up, and watched as the Harpoons flew into position — dumb-robot spears, remotely controlled by Juno, that hovered above the ground and then plunged unerringly into the Godzilla’s midriff. The Harpoons then fired fast pulses of ultrasound into the creature’s inner torso, causing it to tremble uncontrollably, brutally disabling its motor impulses. Suddenly the Godzilla could not move, or roar, or fight. It was frozen to the spot, like a mammoth in ice.
From start to finish the whole battle had taken about ten minutes.
And Tonii sighed inwardly with regret. He knew he had played his role well; but he always hated it when the robots got to take down the beast.
Before the Godzilla could stir, Dravens dropped more sticky nets, which hardened as they touched, and left the monster completely trapped. Once the sticky fibres had fully set, these diamond-hard containing ropes would be virtually unbreakable.
“A job well done,” Helms murmured on his private MI channel to Sorcha.
“We could have killed the fucking thing in half the time,” Sorcha muttered back.
Helms remembered to click off his MI link before he sighed, despairingly.
“Stampede approaching,” Ben said suddenly, over the general channel, then added, with just a hint of anxiety in his tone, “Approaching fast. Four Godzillas and a, and a, well, some other kind of thing, I’m uploading the image now.”
Helms looked at the image projected on his camera. “What the —” he began to say, and almost swore.
And then the stampede struck.
The Flesh-Webs exploded; a terrible screaming/keening noise shrilled out; and the monsters stormed into the clearing like demons fleeing hell.
“Another new species . . .” murmured Hugo, delightedly, as he realised the pack of four rampaging Godzillas was accompanied by a rhino-type beast unknown to him with a central horn on each of its three heads.
“Let’s call it a Cerberus,” Hugo added swiftly, elated.
“That name has already been —” Helms began to say, then he was silent, for he knew what was about to happen.
“Engage the enemy!” said Sorcha, joyously, and she and two of her Soldiers went on one knee, plasma cannons raised. Tonii flew up above them, to provide aerial support.
And suddenly Tonii was full of glorious energy. His plasma gun was charged to full. This was a battle to the —
Mia flew past him with stunning speed and hovered in front of the great beasts, smack in the path of his intended plasma beam.
“Out of the fucking way!” Sorcha roared.
The Godzillas saw her and thrashed their vast single-clawed paws at her. The rhino-type creature — the Cerberus — bellowed and spat venom that splashed harmlessly off her armour and melted the undergrowth below.
“I said: Out. Of. The. Fucking. Way!” screamed Sorcha.
“You’re a marvel, Mia, get those close-ups!” howled Hugo.
Mia was flying and framing shots at the same time. Her flight path was erratic, but her exceptional flying skills kept her well clear of the beasts. She got a wonderful panning sequence of the Godzillas, then filmed the charging Cerberus, still keeping a safe height; but was astonished when whipcords emerged from the spines in its back and lashed a thousand metres into the air to catch her and drag her to the ground.
Mia crashed hard, trying to keep her body loose. And the Cerberus lifted her again, ready to smash her to pieces.
“Fire and kill,” said Sorcha calmly. She and her Soldiers fired with unerring accuracy and a haze of plasma-beam energy ripped across the clearing. There was a devastating flash of light as the plasma beams intersected, and the tribe of vast monsters disintegrated into puddles of blood and gore.
The total obliteration of the army of monsters was achieved in less than a quarter-second. And the after-image of the burning beasts lived in the eyes of all who witnessed it for a millisecond more, before their eyes cleared and then th
ere was nothing.
“We could have taken that new one as a specimen,” Hugo said, plaintively.
“Urgh, fuck,” said Mia, lying on the ground, badly winded.
Sorcha glowered. These civilians had no fucking sense.
As the Scientists soared across to inspect the gloop that had once been alien flesh, Tonii flew over to Mia. He felt a deep rage at her foolishness in hindering their battle, but when he spoke his tone was surprisingly gentle:
“Are you OK?”
She retracted her helmet and spat teeth. There was blood dripping from her nose. “You bet!” she crowed.
And then Tonii retracted his own helmet. His long black hair flowed in the icy breeze. He was amused at her beaming face, and couldn’t resist grinning back.
And Mia, though she ached all over, couldn’t help adoring the perfect beauty of this calmly dangerous man.
“Let’s get this specimen back to base, if we may,” said Professor Helms.
Inside the AmRover, Ben waved his wizard hands, to guide the Dravens downwards.
The Dravens descended, until they were hovering low above the clearing, and then they began to winch the unconscious and sole surviving Godzilla up in their super-fine net.
The battle was over; the beast was caught.
And Helms realised with some surprise that his pulse was still racing, his heart still pounding. He’d been shocked when the monsters had suddenly erupted into the clearing; blind panic had seized him and he had been consumed by the bitter-sweet nauseous exhilaration of being close to death.
It reminded him of those other times in his life when he had been so very close to death. In that moment of total terror, like a drunk experiencing dizziness, his memories of his past fears merged with his present fear and coalesced into a single fight-or-flight epiphany.
And he loved it. He loved being terrified. He loved hunting. He loved the thrill of the chase. He loved it when disasters befell them and they had to escape by the skin of their teeth. He was, despite his calm professorial manner, despite his cautious and judicious approach to things, addicted to danger.
“Are you all right, Professor?” Django asked.
“I’m fine,” Helms conceded, anxiously. “I do get rather tense at these moments, you know. I’m much happier,” he added, self- deprecatingly, and quite untruthfully, “behind my computer screen, or in the lab.”
Django grinned. His eyes were bright. He, too, was high.
The Scientists commenced their task of sectoring the area — analysing every last centimetre of the site, catologuing every single plant and bug, every lurking animal, every bird that flew overhead and all the microscopic creatures in the bushes and topsoil and air, and drilling out a vast tube of subsoil to analyse its constitution and ecology in the same painstaking detail.
Major Sorcha Molloy walked over to Ben Kirkham. “So, explain yourself,” she said quietly.
“What?” Ben said loudly, staring not at her but beyond her, in an infuriating fashion. “Are you addressing me, Major?”
“You missed five hostiles,” she said, quietly still, and this time Ben caught the warning tone in her voice, but still he wouldn’t meet her eyes.
“I didn’t miss them,” he said, defensively.
“You didn’t say they were coming, and they came. Those were huge creatures, how the fuck could you not have seen them?”
“Must have been,” Ben said snidely, “a computer malfunction? Or maybe I was, as always, doing the work of ten men? Hmm? Let’s be honest, now, could you do what I do? No? No! I don’t think so!” he crowed.
“Don’t you be fucking whatchmacall with me,” Sorcha snarled.
“Do you mean, perhaps, ‘ironic’? Ah, I think you do.” Then Ben did a rapid double take of shock and horror. “Me? Ironic? Heaven forbid!”
Sorcha felt like punching him.
“Is there a problem?” said Helms, strolling across.
Sorcha scowled. “No.”
Helms smiled shyly, and paused for a while, and Sorcha and Ben leaned over to hear what he might say. Eventually he murmured: “Come now, Ben, be candid; is there a problem?”
“This bitch is busting my balls.”
Helms carried on smiling. Sorcha glared.
“I wonder, actually, if you should apologise, old chap,” said Helms, mildly.
“The fuck I will.”
And still Helms was smiling that faint half-smile of his. “Ben, you’re one of the smartest men I’ve ever met,” he conceded. “You’re brilliant, you hardly ever make mistakes. And when you do make an error — you’re the first to admit it! I admire that.”
Ben basked in the Professor’s approbation. “I guess — well, all things considered.” He took a deep breath. Then: “I’m sorry, Major,” he said, warmly. “I screwed up, I don’t know how. But I promise it won’t ever happen again.”
And he walked off, content.
Sorcha seethed. How the fuck did Helms do that?
“That man’s a liability,” she muttered.
“He’s a brilliant —” Helms broke off, seeing the rage in Sorcha’s eyes, and swiftly corrected himself: “You’re absolutely right, Major, the man’s a total pain in the arse,” he said, in tones that exuded outrage. “But don’t worry, I shall keep him in check.”
“You see you do.”
“I will.”
“His attitude is poor.”
“Yes, Major.”
Sorcha fumed.
“But the real question,” Helms added, “is why Juno didn’t spot those hostiles. It wasn’t exactly subtle — they started charging a mile away.”
“Maybe she was distracted.”
“Computer brains do not get distracted. What the hell is wrong with her?”
Hugo sat on a tree trunk and started typing up his journal, eyes scrunched up with intense concentration. His screen was virtual, and his stubby fingers poked at incorporeal keys that floated in mid-air.
Dr Hugo Baal was a great and highly acclaimed xenobiologist, one of the legendary figures in a field full of legendary figures. He was also, to his chagrin, a short fat man in a world of tall, slim, good-looking, muscular giants.
His parents had been eco-freaks, and he had been cursed with a natural birth — no in vitro modifying, no tinkering with his height and physique genes.
As a boy, his lack of tallness and slimness had bothered Hugo enormously. He’d been bullied and mocked, and ignored by the tall, cool good-looking guys and the tall, beautiful girls.
So Hugo had taunted the tall guys with a series of cutting and brilliant one-liners; and he had seduced and won the hearts of the beautiful girls with his understated charm, his eloquence, his wistful eyes.
Or at least, in his restless imagination, all these things had happened, and were true. In real life, however, no one had liked him: he was just the short fat kid. Consequently he became an outcast, and a social pariah, and spent all his time studying bugs.
But these days, he didn’t care about being short and fat and not popular. Because Hugo knew he was cleverer, by far, indeed several orders of magnitude cleverer and more brilliant, than all of those tall, slim, muscular, good-looking bastards put together.
Except, perhaps, for Professor Helms, who was quite awe-inspiringly clever, and undoubtedly a genius.
Hugo nursed a dark secret, which was not in fact a secret at all, since all his colleagues had long ago guessed it: he was jealous of the Professor. For Helms knew an amazing number of facts; he was an acclaimed expert in his sphere, and many others; he was a natural leader; and for some astonishing reason, women seemed to find him attractive.
It was so damned unfair!
The Dravens flew in convoy, carrying the Godzilla in an aerial lift above the canopy of trees.
Below them, Two-Tails scampered in the amber light that shone off the greenness of the great circle-leaves. Gryphons glided in the upper atmosphere, warily watching the robot birds below effortlessly carrying the fifty-ton stunned behemoth. A fl
ock of Stymphalian birds rocketed past the Dravens, dropping poisoned shit downwards, only to be blasted out of the sky with a few carefully placed smartlaser blasts.
The Dravens, sleek robot aircraft, were extraordinarily manoeuvrable, and could turn in the air faster than a hawk. They were jet-black but jewelled, so they shone in the sun, creating a glare designed to disorientate enemies. And each of them was, in the normal course of events, remotely controlled by Juno, the Mother Ship’s quantum computer, which treated the robot bodies on New Amazon as its limbs and eyes.
And so the Dravens flew, through white and blue and ochre clouds, while all around them swooped and soared a vast variety of New Amazonian birds. Light shone on their robot carapaces, and the billowing purple canopy stretched below as they towed the vast unconscious Godzilla through the air.
After two gruelling hours of travelling, the convoy reached Xabar and drove into the Cleansing Bay. Red-hot sprays purged the exteriors of the AmRovers and the cargo truck.
Then the Scientists and Soldiers stepped out in their body armour and were drenched by cleansing showers.
Sorcha was putting on her uniform, a semi-armoured black and gold trouser suit with major’s epaulettes above her left breast, as Helms approached her.
“A successful day, I believe, sir,” Helms said courteously.
“Kirkham is a total fuck-up, you should get rid of him.”
“I don’t think I —”
Red Claw Page 2
