The Eternal War tr-4
Page 26
Right, I see … His foggy mind understood that he had a bayonet lodged in his throat.
He found himself sliding forward, dizzy-headed, slumped on to the sandbag in front of him. He looked up at the woman as she stepped carefully over him … She really was quite beautiful. She dropped down into the trench beside him and yanked the protruding blade from his throat.
Sutter gushed dark blood on to the sandbag.
Beautiful. She really is. Like an angel. His mouth flapped open, blood spilling over his lips and down his chin as he tried to ask her if that’s what she was.
She smiled at him. ‘Please die quietly now,’ she said in an almost motherly way as she covered his mouth with her hand.
CHAPTER 64
2001, HMS Defiant
All she could see, staring up at the bunk above her, all she could see, were fleeting images of the bodies, large and small, lined up head to toe at the side of the street. Just like sacks of rubbish. Sal realized she didn’t really have a word that described how she felt right now. Empty? Hollow?
Is this shock I’m feeling? Am I in a state of shock?
The bunk creaked as Lincoln stirred on the mattress above. One booted foot hung over the side; he was far too long in the leg for these cramped bunks. She could hear the gentle thrum of far-off engines vibrating through the carrier’s hull, the quiet murmur of men along a passageway. The faint clang of pots and pans in a galley.
About thirty-six hours … That’s about all she remembered Liam saying as she and Lincoln were taken aboard the carrier and some army doctor quickly inspected them.
About thirty-six hours — he’d said something about the carrier picking up troops then heading north and they were getting a lift part of the way … and then, she was here, stretched out on this bunk in the vessel’s sickbay, and she suddenly realized how completely exhausted she felt. As if the mattress beneath her had somehow drained her of life; sucked the very blood from her veins and left a withered husk lying on top of it.
She saw their bodies … glassy-eyed, dead animal-human faces gazing up at the blue sky.
Samuel, his small ragged mouth hanging open, frozen in an uneven ‘O’ of terror.
She watched them being tossed on to the back of a vehicle like so many sacks of oatmeal. She heard one of the men say the bodies were to be ‘processed’ and fed to the huffaloes. Then she saw some other creatures, new types of eugenics: large shaggy bull-fronted animals with vaguely horse-like heads and slender hind quarters and dog-like creatures with heads that reminded her of baboons. Both types seemed to have the dull eyes of dim-witted beasts. Faces that lacked emotion or expression.
Not like Samuel and his fellow runaways. New breeds … ones less intelligent, less inquisitive, less likely to question their lot.
Controllable.
She closed her eyes reluctantly, too tired to keep them open, but knowing that against the smooth dark canvas of her eyelids she was going to see Samuel’s blood-spattered face once again.
‘Several stops, actually,’ said Captain McManus. ‘We’re collecting the rest of the regiment.’
‘The rest?’ Liam frowned. ‘There’s more of you on this … ship?’
‘Eight hundred and thirty-six, if my memory serves me. Six hundred and twenty-seven men and officers of the regiment. Twenty-four hunter-seekers and fifty huffaloes … and, of course, the carrier’s crew and support personnel — a hundred and twenty-three in total.’ He sipped his tea. ‘But we have three companies of men spread out across the Virginia countryside on various manoeuvres … patrols, peace-keeping.’ He smiled.
Peace-keeping?
The term didn’t sit well with what he’d witnessed earlier this morning.
‘When we’ve got them all aboard, we shall head north and set down outside New Wellington, New Jersey. It’s at the mouth of Lower New York Bay,’ said Captain McManus. ‘There’s a carrier dock there. We’ll be stopping to resupply the regiment and refuel the carrier before heading north again. You and your friends can get off there if you wish.’
Liam nodded. He’d noticed there was a buzz of activity going on aboard the ship: junior officers scurrying to and fro with clipboards under their arms. ‘Is there something happening?’
McManus looked up from his teacup. The officers’ mess was small, little more than a space for three bench tables and stools either side. The walls decorated with regimental trophies and grainy sepia group photographs of smiling young men in smart formal dress uniforms. Overhead, a glass chandelier swung gently from the low ceiling, tinkling softly from the vibration of the carrier’s engines.
They had the officers’ mess to themselves.
‘A little situation appears to be developing up north that needs to be dealt with.’ McManus shrugged. ‘Nothing my lads can’t handle.’ It was obvious to Liam the officer wasn’t going to give him any more on that.
Liam stirred a teaspoon in his china cup absently, while Bob looked down at his tea, studying a pattern of leaves floating on the surface.
‘My ordering the disposal of those eugenics …’ said McManus, ‘that’s troubling you, isn’t it?’
‘To be honest … yes.’ Liam picked up a hard-tack biscuit off a plate between them and turned it over and over. Not really hungry. Not really sure why he’d picked it up. Something for his hands to do. ‘Yes, it is.’
‘They were older genics. Ones designed and grown a while back. Some of them were twenty … even thirty years old. They were unreliable, Liam. Dangerous.’ He sighed. ‘Back in the 1970s, they produced tens of thousands of them for all sorts of different roles.’ McManus shook his head. ‘Good grief, even as household workers … cooks, butlers, would you believe? And for those sorts of tasks they needed to be intelligent enough.’
He sipped his tea. ‘We’ve learned a lot about eugenology since then. How it’s far easier to design the shape and musculature of a creature than it is to design how it will behave, what it will think. These days we know better. The eugenics are crafted with far simpler minds.’ McManus shook his head. ‘It was madness, looking back now with hindsight, madness to have created eugenics intelligent enough to, for example, read and write. To hope we could grow creatures who would be our engineers, technicians, doctors … and assume they could be controlled like pets.’
‘Those creatures …?’ Liam looked up at him. ‘Are you saying those creatures were smart enough to read and write?’
McManus shrugged. ‘Most of them were the old-class manual labourers. More intelligent than the heavy-lifter genics we produce now … but not by much.’
He studied Liam’s troubled frown. ‘Look, Liam … I think you are making the mistake of thinking of these creatures as some form of natural life. They are not. They are organic products, bone and muscle machines … nothing more. And when a machine starts acting unreliably then it is time for it to be dismantled. Otherwise, people get hurt.’
Bob muttered. Something was going through his head. Liam glanced across the table at him. He looked troubled as well. Liam wondered whether his support unit felt some sort of kinship with the eugenics. After all, from what he could guess, they’d all sprung from the same science.
‘They were machines that had gone bad. And quite dangerous.’ He leaned forward across the small table. ‘I shall be honest with you, Liam. I wasn’t quite sure whether we would find your stepsister and friend in one piece. They are really very lucky to be alive.’
‘I s’pose.’
‘Lord knows how many more of those things are still out there. Most of the old-generation genics have been rounded up and processed, but I think there are still quite a few hundred scattered among the Confederate states: runaways living in derelict dwellings, or living wild in woods and mountains. It is a problem that needs to be addressed … and one day, I suppose, we shall have to track down the last of them. But it’s not something we can do right now.’
‘Why not?’
McManus looked like he was going to ignore Liam’s question.
Liam shrugged. ‘We were going to visit New York — ’
‘You know, it really is as if you have arrived from another world entirely.’ McManus studied him intently. ‘Did you really not know that New York has been a war zone for nearly seventy years?’
Liam nodded. ‘Uh? Yes, of course. Maybe me an’ Bob and the others’ll go explore the west instead.’
McManus nodded. ‘It would be a much safer excursion for you. I believe it is still an unspoiled wilderness if you seek the far western mountain states like New Wessex and New Albany. I have heard from White Bear that there are still tribes of Indians living in that wilderness.’
‘Eight hundred and twenty-four,’ said Bob.
The other two looked at him.
‘Uh?’
‘Eight hundred and twenty-four personnel,’ said Bob. ‘You have itemized that number of personnel, but initially you said there was a total of eight hundred and thirty-six personnel. That leaves twelve unaccounted for.’
McManus made a face. ‘Ah well, I am no mathematician …’
A klaxon sounded softly.
McManus looked up. ‘We shall be descending shortly for a pick-up. If you’ll excuse me?’
CHAPTER 65
2001, New York
‘Well? Can we use it?’
Becks crouched beside the antennae array, a motorized rotating platform two foot in diameter topped with a dozen aerials like bristles from a hairbrush. Above them, a flared, cone-shaped dish of fine aluminium mesh.
Maddy shivered as a fresh breeze whipped across the rooftop. From where they were on top of one of the tallest buildings still standing she could make out most of the shattered remains of New York. A scarred landscape of jagged broken buildings like the stumps of rotting teeth. A landscape of crumbling concrete grey with a dash of green here and there where nature had decided to make an early start reclaiming the land for itself.
Down below, following the twisted trunk of cables over the lip of the roof, was the familiar outline of Times Square … although she’d discovered from Devereau it had been renamed Place D’Libertaire last time the French-run North had held the city this side of the East River. She felt dizzy looking down. She stepped back from the edge and turned to Becks quietly studying the antennae array. ‘So? What do you think?’
The support unit nodded thoughtfully. ‘The dish can be used to project tachyon particles. The antennae platform may also be useful.’
‘Hmmm.’ Maddy pushed her glasses up. ‘I guess I can figure out how to hook up the platform with our computer system. It’s just an electrical motor. Yeah, we should just take the whole thing.’
‘Affirmative.’
She left Becks inspecting the bottom of the platform and crossed the rooftop towards where Wainwright stood with a couple of his men.
‘We can make use of it,’ she said. ‘We just need to get it down in one piece.’
Wainwright nodded. ‘Good, I shall have my men help your … uh … your …’ His gaze wandered over her shoulder to the huddled-over form of Becks. His voice trailed to nothing.
Maddy had the distinct impression he was going to say ‘your eugenic’.
‘My men are telling me she killed every last man inside. The entire garrison.’
Maddy nodded. She’d arrived in time to see the last of the bodies being carried out of the bunker and Becks standing outside the entrance, her pale face splashed with ribbons and dots of drying blood and a friendly Did I do good? smile stretched across her lips.
It had actually made her shudder.
‘Not a single prisoner taken,’ said Wainwright quietly. ‘What on earth is she?’
‘Her mission priority was capturing the antennae intact. Not, I’m afraid, to take any prisoners.’
She decided it would be too difficult to explain to Wainwright that the lives she’d just taken with her bare hands were those that never should have been lived anyway. The bloody corpses lying outside the bunker were men who would be living very different lives once more … once history had been corrected.
But her imagination flashed images of the short and brutal struggle that must have gone on inside. It made her shiver at the thought that she, Sal and Liam shared the archway with two creatures, Bob and Becks, who could tear the three of them to ragged shreds if the notion popped into their heads — if a line of computer code decided it was a ‘mission priority’.
‘To answer your question, Colonel … you ask what is she?’ She turned to look at Becks now on her back inspecting the space beneath the array platform, disconnecting the power cables.
‘She’s a killing machine … a combat unit from the future, I suppose… You could think of her as an advanced type of one of your eugenics.’
‘Good God!’ His eyes widened. ‘I would prefer not to think of her … it … as that,’ he uttered.
‘Becks is a she … not an it. You’d hurt her feelings if she heard you say that.’ She forced a chuckle. The laugh died in her throat.
‘And you, Miss Carter? What about you?’ His eyes narrowed. ‘Are you some artificial construct? Some sort of super-warrior in disguise? A eugenic?’
‘Once upon a time I was a computer-games programmer. Someone good at sitting down and tapping away at a keyboard. That’s me.’ She shrugged. ‘I’m no one special, I’m afraid.’
A breeze tugged at them, sent dust devils skipping across the rooftop.
‘Have you sent your message, Colonel?’
Wainwright nodded. He’d broadcast a rallying call to the regiments up the line before they dismantled the array. They could only hope his stirring speech would do its job and other Confederate troops further along would signal they intended to join the mutiny. But there’d been nothing so far.
‘We shall hear from them soon,’ he smiled. ‘I’m sure.’
‘Then we should get started dismantling this thing,’ said Maddy. She looked up at the blue sky, then south-west towards the horizon where a distant bank of cloud promised them an overcast day later on. ‘Who knows how long we’ve got until the British come for us.’
Wainwright followed her gaze. ‘Indeed.’
CHAPTER 66
2001, New Wellington
Liam and the others stood on the gun deck just in front of the forward turret: a dome of plated metal ten feet high and two dozen in diameter, lined with knuckle-sized rivets. Two long artillery barrels protruded from gunnery slits, for the moment covered with a protective tarpaulin.
They watched as the carrier slowly descended towards New Wellington through a ghostly white sky of thinly combed clouds. To their left, the east coast of America; to the right, the surly grey Atlantic Ocean. Ahead of them he could see a grid-like blanket was spread beneath the prow of the carrier: roads, streets, avenues cutting the city into a chessboard of suburban, industrial and business districts.
‘Look,’ said Liam, pointing towards the coast.
The misty sky above New Wellington was haunted by the spectral silhouettes of a dozen elongated sky ships, several of them similar in profile to the carrier on which they were standing.
‘I see … eleven,’ said Lincoln. ‘No … twelve, if I’m not mistaken.’
Sal screwed her eyes up as she spotted faint dark slivers further out above the sea. ‘And more coming in.’ She looked at the other two. ‘Do you think every one of them is full of soldiers?’
‘I guess those are other British regiments.’ Liam tugged at the borrowed duffle-coat. Pulled the hood up against the fresh wind. ‘Something big is under way. That’s for sure.’
Closer to them, close enough to see the detailing of decks and gun turrets and the large segmented central gas-ballast tanks, a carrier almost identical to theirs was settling into a dockside berth. With the echoing of a horn like a distan
t whale’s song and a faint roar of compressed gas, it blasted the open ground beneath it — a space the size of at least two football pitches end to end — with a blizzard of snow and nitrogen gas. It seemed to settle on its own cloud, a white cushion that slowly billowed outwards and finally faded, revealing the acres of tarmac dusted with snow.
Liam could see four other similar landing strips, each one towered over by a pair of docking cranes hundreds of feet high. As they watched, the freshly landed ship was embraced fore and aft by the cranes, swinging round until they snugly locked on to the vessel, holding it like a babe in arms.
As the last of the nitrogen cloud cleared, the bottom of the ship’s hull began to open and loading ramps emerged. They watched the peppercorn dots of tiny figures disembarking and slowly forming into orderly ranks on the landing strip.
Liam and Sal looked at each other. A wordless exchange that Liam knew meant she was thinking the same thing. Yet another sight, another amazing sight, that was never meant to be.
He looked out again, leaning his elbows on the brass rail, at the vision, another moment in time that he knew he was never going to forget. Like the inland sea of Cretaceous Texas and that sweeping plain dotted with herds of dinosaurs; or the glistening wall of chain mail and armour of Richard the Lionheart’s advancing army; a horizon of fluttering pennants and waving pikes, the sturdy frames of trebuchets in the distance. Moments etched into his memory as permanently as letters carved into marble.
He realized that, if by chance he died tomorrow, in his short life he’d already seen more things — heard, tasted, smelled, experienced more of history — than any person, any historian could ever dream to hope for.
‘Now that’s quite something, eh, Sal?’
She nodded. Silently picking out her own details to remember.
Lincoln in turn stared wide-eyed and ashen-faced. ‘And this? This is but a portion of the might of the British army?’ he uttered.