Burnt Ice (41 page)

‘Well, the winds are still very
high so at least the monitors can’t use the base aircraft with the atmosphere
so churned up.’

‘That’s one thing, Harry, but
this dust is going to stuff our filters and engines bloody quick. Topaz, you
had better give us a time estimate for cleaning intervals on the filters. We
need these machines. How soon before
Rose
is visible again, Fritz?’

‘Twenty-nine minutes.’

‘Right, we stop here and wait.’

‘She might not be able to see
much. There is still a hellish load of material in the atmosphere.’

‘Yeah, I know. Let’s have a look
around and find a more defendable place. The facility is two kilometres to our
front. It’s a bastard that none of the orbital-generated terrain maps are
available to us. I’ll wait here. Jan orbit left, Harry right. Find us a better
spot. You have fifteen minutes. Go.’

‘The filters will need cleaning
out every thirty minutes at this level of airborne dust, major.’

‘Yeah, that’d be right. Thanks,
Topaz.’

Jan and Marko flew out in a
five-hundred-metre orbit. Their side was just flat, featureless desert. They
searched for the fifteen minutes but found nothing suitable, so flew back to
the major. Harry returned and signalled everyone to follow him. Ten minutes
later they found themselves in a narrow, high-walled ravine with big rocks and
cover for them all, its open end facing the facility. The winds were slowly
abating, the dun-coloured dust also settling.

‘Jan, Marko, left wall. Harry,
Fritz, right. Conceal the Gunbus as best you can. Oh, and knock the dust out of
those filters while you’re at it. As soon as the GB monitors are within two
hundred metres of us, disable them all. Just put them on the deck. We are
stuffed, one way or the other. We get through them and somehow into the facility
and find a serious decontamination area, or we die here. Topaz, stay with Jan
and Marko. Ernst, you are with Harry and Fritz. I want you to relay to
Rose
everything that happens here so she can tell everyone what actually went on. It
is a long time since the Games Board has had units go mad on them, or at least
I hope so, as that is the least terrifying explanation so far. I wonder what’s
happened with this lot. Well, we’ll know soon enough. ACEs, do whatever you can
to help us. How many projectile darts do you have left, Glint?’

‘I am down to nine projectiles,
major, with a further five being assembled by Ernst.’

‘Captain,’ said Topaz, ‘I am
picking up four hover cameras that have descended to two hundred metres above
us. I believe that we can expect company at any time. Comms with
Rose
is
re-established. She has me using an interesting line-of-sight UHF radio system.
It only took me an hour to build the little unit. Archaic, but it works OK. As
suspected, she can see very little through the dust. She says that an
unidentified ship is approaching at very high speed. She has hailed it, but no
answer. We believe it to be an Expeditor. She has been advised that two
Administration rapid response ships are also inbound, but they will be several
hours yet. She wishes us good luck and is deeply concerned for our wellbeing.’

‘Thank her for her assistance,
Topaz. We are most grateful.’

Four heavily armoured GB
monitors, with grotesque, baroque outer shell designs, charged up out of the
darkness on AG. Marko toggled his radio back on and picked up a screaming rant.
Each crew member independently judged their two hundred metres — probably a
little on the excessive side — and the rifles boomed, and boomed again. The
monitor that Marko was firing at hit the ground and somersaulted a few times,
before landing with a thump thirty metres from the major, who had taken cover
behind a large, flat-topped rock towards the centre of the ravine. The tirade
of insults stopped abruptly. One of the monitors, an exotic demon skull making
up its whole upper casing, rocketed up above them.

Someone — and Marko could only
presume it was Fritz — had not quite hit his mark, as the AG unit was still
working. It flew with weapons extended, randomly firing, looking for whoever
was shooting at it. Glint did not miss. Three very rapid shots from his linear
rifle blew its powerpack to pieces, with the large fiery pieces crashing down
onto one of the concealed Gunbuses. The main part of the armour hit hard and
rolled up against the ravine wall. The spare dicyanoacetylene erupted, flinging
someone — was it Harry or Fritz? — and Ernst high against the ravine wall. They
bounced a few times, rolled and lay still.

The monitor that had been in the
armour crawled out on its partially functioning AG, only to meet a vengeful
Flint, who without ceremony pounced on it, thrust two of his forearm hands
through its eyes and tore its brain apart. It screamed so loudly that everyone
could hear, even through the thin atmosphere and their helmets. As Marko watched,
Flint scuttled up the hillside, so he assumed that their downed crewmate was
Harry.

Marko mused that Jan must have
done something interesting to her target, as it was about a metre off the
ground and quickly spinning, seemingly out of control. The one that Harry had
shot was on the ground face down and not moving.

Jan swung left to cover the major
as Marko trotted across to the face-down unit. He squatted and grabbed the
monitor’s armour to roll it onto its back. This one had a snarling dog-type skull
as its motif, which Marko thought was nicely executed. Looking at the front
cover he saw that Harry had put two diamond rounds through the AG unit and
another one through the armour precisely where its occupant’s head would be. He
pulled off the catches and wrenched open the canopy. The monitor inside was the
spitting image of Sirius, minus the back of her head. He left it alone then
walked towards the one that Jan had disabled when she called to him.

‘Leave it, Marko. It will run out
of power eventually.’

He acknowledged and ran back
across to the major. Fritz came up beside them saying that Harry’s suit
appeared intact, but that he could not get a response from him apart from
groaning and swearing. The suits were tough, but did not have inertial dampers
built into them, so being thrown fifteen metres into a cliff face would have
hurt. The Ernst unit was functional but had lost AG control and a chunk of
hardware capability.

Marko walked up to the monitor he
had shot down, ripped the weapons away from the outer casing then kicked the
top of the housing, smashing the targeting sensors for good measure.
Struggling, it first rolled over onto its back, then sat up as best it could,
using its waldos. The canopy, engraved with the image of a most hideous, grotesque
human skull, opened. Marko was taken aback as this monitor was also the
spitting image of Sirius — although this version was pure malevolence. She
raged at him, accusing them of attacking the monitors unprovoked, and promising
that the Expeditors would execute them all once they arrived. She cursed Marko
for removing her main weapons, calling him a coward. She reached behind her
torso, pulling out a side arm. Glint flashed past Marko, ripped it from her
hand and hit her on the side of the head with it, breaking her skull-mounted
recording devices and ripping her oversized left ear.

The major asked her why they
wanted him and his crew dead. Her answer was that
Basalt’s
crew had
allowed the cruellest defilement of her clone mother, Sirius, and that they had
to pay the price. When pushed for further information, she refused, loudly
asking for death. The major, saying nothing, climbed back into the Hog then,
with its manipulators, ripped off the AG unit from the outer casing of the
monitor. He then tore its canopy off, ripping it to pieces, tossing the bits
onto the sand. Finally he came behind the monitor, reached down and crushed the
casing against her, pinning her inside, then at a measured pace walked away
towards the facility.

Nail sauntered up to the monitor,
climbed up the casing and looked at her closely, then yawned widely, reached
forwards with a single claw and opened up her cheek. Then, very deliberately,
as the monitor thrashed around, the cat spat in both her eyes.

‘Boss! Look up! I think that she
just initiated something. The only thing available to her will be the cameras.
They are sneaky shits, these Games Board types. I bet she’ll try to crash a
camera unit on you.’

The major immediately stopped the
Hog, lifting its rotary cannon which activated its barrels. With a sound like
that of tearing paper, it fired, then rotated through sixty degrees and fired
again, Topaz feeding coordinates to the major. One of the camera units came
down in pieces onto the shield of the Hog, knocking it over. Two more rapidly
descending targets flashed up on everyone’s HUDs, as Topaz took control of all
the suit side-arm rotaries, including that of the semi-conscious Harry, and
swatted the remaining threats out of the sky. Marko decided that she must have
been enjoying herself as seconds later she fired again, rending the falling
camera units into even smaller pieces.

They looked at each other,
shrugged, then jogged back to the remaining Gunbus and checked on Harry and
Ernst, who were mobile again. Once all crew and their equipment were loaded,
they followed the Hog, which had picked itself up and was moving towards the
facility.

‘Administration forces. Stand
down: this is a Games Board Expeditor action. We will deal with these errant
monitors.’

‘Help yourself.’ said the major. ‘We
need assistance to identify the bacteria that we have been coated with,
Expeditor leader. We need decontamination as soon as possible to survive this
day.’

‘Such is not our concern, Major
Longbow. Our only concern is with the errant monitors. We note that there have
been a series of most regrettable incidents outside the approved script. For
that, please accept my apologies, but your personal health is not my concern.
However, I must congratulate you on a splendid performance. The show rated very
highly and your separate accounts have been credited accordingly. You can thank
your agent for negotiating a most favourable rate on your behalf. Included in
that rate is compensation for any equipment lost or damaged. You also have the
right to take anything from this engagement that you wish — a most peculiar
stipulation in your contracts, but who am I to question the Games Board
Executive? I wish you well. I note a firefight has occurred at your position. I
request that you clear the area. We will be landing shortly. Goodbye, major.’

Jan pushed the Gunbus as fast as
it would go to catch up with Longbow. He was running the Hog hard to get as far
away from the Expeditors as quickly as possible.

Eventually, they made it to the
main doors of the facility. They tried every method, including a savage kicking
at one of the doors by the major’s Hog, but could not raising a response from
27. All doors were sealed shut.

‘Shit! Can’t find any jack
points, so I can’t hack the bastard,’ Fritz said. ‘Sorry, can’t help. If I
could find one of the control units in the foundry and jack into it with Topaz
and Nail’s help, I could get us in. Would only take a couple of hours.’

‘Yeah. OK, Fritz. That’s a pox!
These buildings are designed to take on any sandstorm and subsequent electrical
storms as well, so that’s just a pure bastard. What’s the bet the monitors
stuffed it up anyway? I think we’re out of time to hack it through the foundry.’

Marko stood beside Jan, looking
at her suit seals, and surmised that his would be only marginally better. The
warnings of imminent suit integrity failure were starting to appear in everyone’s
HUDs.

‘Well, we don’t have long before
finding out just what the nasties waiting in the sludge and scum on the
outsides of our suits have in store for us, do we?’ Harry observed.

‘Maybe you will not have to
endure that anyway,’ Topaz replied. ‘I note that the bacterial numbers are
rapidly falling. I would suggest that they will be at zero within three hours,
which is dawn. There are no flies present either. The last message I had from
Rose
is that the rapid response frigates will be here in one hour seventeen minutes.
I have advised her of our situation. I also briefly made contact with 27. It
said that it had been incapacitated by a virus and is sorry it cannot assist as
it still has no control of the facilities but wishes us all well.

‘We are all contaminated, but it
is you biologicals who are most at risk. I suggest that you drop off your outer
heavy armour here. Glint, I need you and Nail to drive the loader to the edge
of the landing field. You all follow on foot. Then you will line up downwind
from him and allow him to spray you all over with the Hog’s dicyanoacetylene.
It is imperative that you are totally covered. The seals will probably
disintegrate anyway. Then you will have to step out of your inner armour, walk
upwind and wait for the frigate. It is also imperative that you maximise your
bioware for oxygen saturation of your bloodstream nanotes. I know that you can
go two hours without needing to breathe. You will also need to lower your
heartrates accordingly.’