“I’ve never seen anything like that before,” Soi Hon exclaimed, raising his voice against the noise. He was standing in the open doorway, a waterproof poncho forming round his shoulders. The drumming sound of the huge drops was easily as loud as the red cloud’s thunder had been. “And we saw some storms round the Pacific in my day, believe me.”
A rivulet of dirty water began to seep in around his feet, trickling round the tables. Annette couldn’t see anything outside now, the rain was battering heavily against the glass, producing the kind of spume that normally topped ocean waves. Behind that, there was only blackness.
Delvan moved up beside him to get a better look. “Nobody’s going anywhere in this.”
“Yes,” Annette agreed shakily. “You’d better wait.”
“How long, though?” Delvan muttered. “We didn’t think about this when we drew the cloud over us.”
“Don’t worry,” Soi Hon said. “Nobody’s going to do any fighting for a while. It’s just as bad for them. And at least we’re inside.”
* * *
The landing boat surged forwards as soon as the dazzling corona from the kinetic harpoons lit up the sky. Sinon used the voidhawks’ vantage point to observe the giant splash of plasma sink into the dark mantle of cloud.
It’s expanding, Acacia announced. Confirm that, we’re tracking it.
Vast cyclonic spirals of cloud were stirring across the upper surface. Washed by Ombey’s pale moonlight, the movement appeared almost majestic. Primeval forces had awoken. Along the edges of the cloud, gargantuan tornadoes began to spin away, careering off over the sea.
The whole damn thing’s breaking up, Choma said.
Sinon shared a shiver of consternation with the other serjeants; not just in his boat. All of them were facing the same onslaught. He stared out over the prow, watching mountains of water on the move. A wind had risen from nowhere to blow straight at him.
We can’t turn back, Choma said. It’ll catch us on the open water. Best head for shore.
Sinon’s hand patted his lifebelt, seeking reassurance. The massif of cloud seemed to be hurtling towards them, a light-absorbing void distending across the ocean.
Keep going, was the decision concurred by the rest of the Edenists and General Hiltch’s command group. Every boat in the Liberation armada rammed its engines to full, and met the stormfront head on.
It wasn’t rain they faced, not in the ordinary sense. The deluge crashing down over them was like standing under a waterfall. As the clouds rampaged overhead, so the waves rose, as if seeking to bridge the gap. The landing boats were thrown around pitilessly. Sometimes Sinon had to hold himself against a deck that was lifting over thirty degrees to the vertical. The jeeps secured along the centre of the hold strained against their restraint cables as their weight was flung about in directions the designers had never anticipated. Bilge pumps were wailing plaintively, to little effect. Sinon clung to a guard rail as the cold water mounted steadily against his legs, sloshing between the hull walls. He was worried he’d get tossed overboard. He was worried his newly assembled body would split along surgical lines as he strained muscles and tendons to hold on. He worried that a jeep would break free and crush him. He worried they wouldn’t reach the beach before the rain and waves filled the hold and sunk them.
Not even sharing the anxiety in the Edenist fashion did much to alleviate it. There was way too much distress bubbling through the aether as the armada battled for shore. The Edenists in secondary support roles, safe away from the megastorm, along with the voidhawks and their crews overhead, did their best to offer what reassurance and comfort they could to their beleaguered kinsmen. But they all felt the death toll rising, compounding the alarm. Landing boats collapsed, pitched over, individual serjeants lost their grip to drown amid the monster waves. Voidhawks laboured tirelessly to absorb the fresh memories of the dying serjeant personalities.
* * *
A nausea suppression program went primary as an aghast Ralph watched the nightmare unfurling. Neatly tabulated icons blinked up inside his mind, indicating the woeful progress the boats were making. Some were even being driven backwards as the gales howled out from the land. He did what he could. For all it was worth. Ordering the ground forces along the firebreak to stay put and dig in. Putting the medical teams on immediate standby. Designating search patrols for the aircraft, ready for the time when it became feasible to fly.
Diana Tiernan and the AI couldn’t give him any estimate when that would be. There was no way of knowing the true weight of water powering the storm. Radar scans from the SD sensor satellites to discover the depth and density were badly distorted by the tremendous electrical discharges still churning madly over Mortonridge. All they could do was wait.
“We couldn’t have known,” Janne Palmer said. “Dealing with the possessed is one giant unknown.”
“We should have guessed,” Ralph answered bitterly. “At least considered it.”
“Best information we had was that the cloud was a couple of hundred metres thick,” Diana said. “That’s all it was on Lalonde and every other planet they took over. But this blasted thing, it must be kilometres deep. They must have sucked every gram of water from the air. There may even be some kind of osmotic process involved, siphoning it up out of the sea.”
“Damn those bastards,” Ralph spat.
“They are afraid,” Acacia said calmly. “They built the thickest, highest wall they could to keep us out. It’s human nature.”
Ralph couldn’t bring himself to answer the Edenist. It was Acacia’s people who were taking the brunt of the calamity. And it was his plan, his orders, which had put them there. Anything he said would be pathetically inadequate.
Outside, the rain had reached Fort Forward, and was doing its best to wash the city’s programmable silicon structures into the nearby river. Fast rivulets were gouging the soil away from their base anchors. Ops Room staff glanced round nervously as banshee winds pummelled away at the walls. Fifty minutes after the kinetic harpoon barrage, the landing boats started to reach the beaches.
“They’re coming through,” Acacia said. The first strands of confidence were starting to emerge within the combined Edenist psyche as serjeants exported the feeling of sand crunching underfoot. Proof that success was possible, the sense of relief which accompanied it. “It’s going to be okay, we’re going to make it.”
“Right,” Ralph croaked. One icon gleamed darkly at the centre of his woeful thoughts: 3129. The number of dead so far. And we’re the only ones shooting.
* * *
An immense wave smacked the landing craft down on the beach with an almighty crunch. The blow sent Sinon skidding back along the hold on his arse, limbs flailing. Water slowed his momentum quickly. He came to rest in a jumble of other serjeants, all struggling to disentangle themselves. The three at the bottom were completely immersed. Affinity was supremely useful in coordinating their movements, like unpicking a three dimensional puzzle.
They’d just got free when the next wave clobbered the side of the landing boat. It lacked the brutality of the previous one, simply shoving the hull further up the beach, and twisting them at an angle.
Dry land! Choma cried triumphantly.
Well . . . land, anyway, Sinon acknowledged dutifully as he sloshed forwards back up the hold. The rain here was even worse than out at sea. Visibility was down to maybe fifteen metres, and that was with the boat’s powerful lights shining down.
Sometimes, I think you have completely the wrong attitude for this.
Sinon sent a smile image at his friend. He carried on searching through the water for pieces of his kit lost during the last portion of the voyage.
The squad began to assess their position. Five had been injured seriously enough to disqualify them from the campaign altogether. Several more had suffered minor cracking in their exoskeletons, which the medical nanonics could cope with. (Surprisingly, the medical nanonics were working reasonably well.) The beach they’d wound u
p on was three kilometres south of their designated landing point, Billesdon. The truck at the back of the hold was so badly flooded it’d require a complete maintenance overhaul. The landing boat was wedged into the shingle, and would need towing off at high tide before it could return to the resort island for the marines.
On the plus side, the forward ramp worked, allowing the three functional jeeps out. Most of their armament was intact. All the other landing boats containing their regiment had made it ashore, though they were spread out along the coast. After a brief discussion with their Ops Room liaison, they agreed to make their way to Billesdon and regroup there. According to their original plan, the back-up forces and supplies would use the town’s harbour as their disembarkation point. But it still had to be secured.
By the time the boat’s forward ramp came down it was technically dawn. Hunched down in the almost nonexistent shelter provided by the starboard hull, Sinon couldn’t notice any difference. The only way he knew the jeeps were lumbering out was by using his affinity to see out through the driver’s eyes.
Looks like we’re on, Choma said.
They rose to their feet, and checked their kit one last time. Sinon’s squad took up position by the second jeep. Intense headlight beams pierced ten metres through the deluge before the grey water defeated them. It was slow going. Their feet sank deep into the saturated shingle. Twice they had to push the jeep when its wide tyres dug themselves into axle-high ruts.
The squad was totally dependent on their guidance blocks. Satellite images taken before the possession provided them with a high-resolution picture of the cove, and the single narrow track leading away from it into the forest at the rear. Inertial guidance designated their position to within ten centimetres. Supposedly. There was no way of checking. Satellite sensors still couldn’t penetrate the cloud to give them a verified location reference. They just had to hope the bitek processors hadn’t been glitched since they loaded them back on the island.
Shingle gave way to tacky mud. Laggard waves of the yellow slough were creeping down the beach from the land behind. Clumps of grass and small bushes were being trawled along with it.
Great, Sinon said as he waded in. At this rate, it’s going to take a week to get there. He was aware of other squads encountering similar difficulties all along the coast.
We need to get to higher ground, Choma said. His affinity indicated a point on the guidance block image. That should give us better terrain to traverse.
The squad concurred, and changed direction slightly.
Any news on when this rain’s going to end? Sinon queried their liaison.
No.
* * *
Not even Cochrane could be bothered to maintain the Karmic Crusader’s outlandish appearance. The rain was eroding their spirits at the same rate it ate into the valley’s soil. Three hours so far, without ever slackening.
Flares of lightning revealed what it was doing to their beautiful circular valley. Water cascaded over the lip, turning the orderly terraces into long curving waterfalls. At each stage it grew muckier and more glutinous as it carried the rich cultivated black soil with it. Avalanches of crops and sturdy young fruit trees were plunging down the ever-steepening slopes to sink without trace into the expanding lake. The lawn at the rear of the farmhouse was slowly submerged, bringing the water up to the ornate iron-framed patio doors.
By that time they were already loading the Karmic Crusader with their cases. Wind had ripped countless slates from the roof, letting the rain in to soak through the ceiling plaster.
“Just bear in mind, there’s only one road out of this valley,” McPhee said when the first rivulet came churning down the stairs into the living room. “And that runs above the river. If we’re going to get out of here, it’s got to be soon.”
Nobody had argued. They splashed their way upstairs to pack while he and Cochrane brought the bus out of the barn. Moyo was driving, keeping their speed to little more than walking pace. The dirt track along the side of the winding valley was crumbling at an alarming rate as sheets of filthy water poured down out of the trees above them, foaming round trunks and raking out the tangled undergrowth. His mind concentrated on giving the bus broader tyres in an attempt to gain some kind of traction on the quagmire surface. It was difficult; he had to get Franklin and McPhee to collaborate with him, meshing their thoughts together.
A tree crashed onto the track twenty metres ahead of them, uprooted by the relentless water. Moyo stamped down on the brakes, but the bus just kept slithering forwards. Not even the full focus of his energistic ability could affect the motion. An untimely reminder about his acute lack of omnipotence. He just managed to shout: “Hold on to something,” before the bus’s front collision buffer hit the trunk. The windscreen turned white, bulging inwards to absorb as much of the impact as it could before finally disintegrating into a hail of tiny plastic spheres. A fat bulb of twigs and spiky topaz leaves burst through the rent. Moyo tried to duck, but the seat straps held him fast. Instinct took over, and a stupendous ball of white fire engulfed the twigs. He screeched as his eyebrows smouldered and his hair shrivelled into black frazzled ash. The skin on his face went dead.
Steam belched along the interior as the Karmic Crusader juddered to a halt. Stephanie loosened her grip on the seat back in front of her, leaving deep indentations in the composite. The floor was tilted at quite an incline. What with the rain drumming on the roof, and the water from the slope pouring round them she could only just distinguish the stressed creaking coming from the bodywork. There was no way of telling what was causing it. Even her eldritch sense was cluttered with confusing shadowforms, the rain was equivalent to strong static interference.
Then water came gurgling eagerly along the aisle, pushing a fringe of filthy scum ahead of it. It glided over her shoes. She made an effort to banish the cloying steam, trying to make out the gloomy interior.
“My eyes!” It was just a whisper, but poignant enough to carry the length of the aisle. Everyone swung round towards the front of the bus.
“Oh god, my eyes. My eyes. Help me! My eyes!”
Stephanie had to hang on to the overhead racks, swinging one hand in front of the other, to make her way forwards. Moyo was still sitting in the driver’s seat, his body rigid. The incinerated remains of the tree’s branch cluster loomed centimetres from his face like some fabulously delicate charcoal sculpture. His hands were held close to his cheeks, trembling from the fear of what he’d find if he actually touched himself.
“It’s all right,” she said automatically. Her mind played traitor, fright and revulsion at what she saw surging to the surface of her thoughts. His skin had roasted away, taking most of his nose and all of his eyelids with it. Blood was dribbling out of the fissures between scabs of crisped corium layers. Both eyes had broiled, turning septic yellow as creamy fluids percolated out in a mockery of tears.
“I can’t see,” he cried. “Why can’t I see?”
She reached out and grasped both his hands. “Shush. Please, darling. It’ll be all right. You just got scorched by the flame, that’s all.”
“I can’t see!”
“Of course you can. You’ve got your sixth sense until your eyes recover. You know I’m here, don’t you?”
“Yes. Don’t go.”
She put her arms round him. “I won’t.” He began shaking violently. Cold sweat was prickling his undamaged skin.
“He’s in shock,” Tina said. The others were gathering round, as much as the cramped aisle would permit. Their thoughts tempered by the sight of Moyo’s injuries.
“He’s all right,” Stephanie insisted in a brittle tone.
“It’s very common with major burn cases.”
Stephanie glared at her.
“Yo, man, give him a drag on this,” Cochrane said. He held out a fat reefer, sickly sweet smoke seeping from its glowing tip.
“Not now!” Stephanie hissed.
“Actually, yes, darling,” Tina said. “For once the ape
man’s right. It’s a mild sedative, which is just what he needs right now.” Stephanie frowned suspiciously at the unaccustomed authority in Tina’s voice. “I used to be a nurse,” the statuesque woman continued, gathering in her black diamante shawl with a contemptuous dignity. “Actually.”
Stephanie took the reefer, and eased it gently into Moyo’s lips. He coughed weakly as he inhaled.
The bus groaned loudly. Its rear end shifted a couple of metres, sending them all grabbing for support. McPhee ducked his head to peer through the broken windscreen. “We’re not going anywhere in this,” he said. “We’d better get out before we get washed away.”
“We can’t move him,” Stephanie protested. “Not for a while.”
“The river’s nearly up level with this track, and we’ve got at least another kilometre and a half to go before we’re out of the valley.”
“Level? It can’t be. We were twenty metres above the valley floor.”
The Karmic Crusader’s headlights were out, so she sent a slender blade of white fire arching over the track. It was as if the land had turned to water. She couldn’t actually see any ground, slopes and hollows were all submerged under several centimetres of flowing yellow-brown water. Just below the flattish section which marked the track, a cavalcade of flotsam was sweeping along the valley. Mangled branches, smashed trunks, and snarled up mats of vegetation were all cluttered together; their smooth progress was ominous, nothing stood in their way. As she watched, another of the trees from the slope above slid down past the bus, staying vertical the whole time until it reached the river.
She didn’t like to think how many more trees were poised just above them. “You’re right,” she said. “Let’s get out of here.”
The Night's Dawn Trilogy Page 280
