Great North Road (91 page)

Paths had been tramped down, but compacted snow was slippery, especially when it was mixed with the organic mucus of disintegrating leaves. Angela had to be careful as she closed in on Luther. There’d been enough falls over the last few days, people winding up in the camp’s clinic with gashed hands and badly bruised legs. She rounded the side of the mess tent and saw more than a dozen people running across the rumpled white landscape. Her grid tagged Paresh, Sergeant Raddon, and Omar among them, holding their Heckler carbines high, shouting at everyone else to stay back.

Everyone was converging on a Land Rover Tropic that was skewed across the churned-up sludge track outside the administration Qwik-Kabin, its headlight beams illuminating the moderate fall of snow with clear white light. The driver’s door was open. A figure she recognized as Olrg Dorchev from the camp systems team was scurrying toward the back of the Tropic, stomping his way through a high mound of unblemished snow. Luther Katzen was lying there, still screaming, clutching at his leg as he rocked back and forth.

Then people closed in around him. Paresh and Omar waving frantically at them to slow down and back off. By the time Angela arrived Luther had quieted down; now he was groaning in pain. She could see blood staining his dark green trousers, splattering onto the snow, showing as near black in the pacified pink light of Sirius. The leg didn’t look right at all. Something about the angle, the way the knee and foot were twisted.

“I’m sorry, man, I’m sorry,” Olrg was moaning. “You just came out at me.”

Angela winced at that, looking back at the Tropic. Luther must have slipped on the ice. Judging from the angle of the vehicle, Olrg had tried to turn away—too late. Bound to happen in these conditions, if people—

Then she smelled it.
Mint.
The air was cold, her nose had chilled down, but she still knew that smell. Her eyes watered up. “Shit, oh shit.”

Mark Chitty and Doc Coniff had arrived, lugging their field kit. They knelt beside Luther, pushing Olrg out of the way. A circle had formed around them, people looking on grimly, thanking their deity it wasn’t them lying there in the blood and vomit, willing the medics on to work a standard twenty-second-century first-aid miracle.

Angela’s e-i quested a link to Paresh. “Stay alert,” she told him. “This wasn’t an accident.”

A frown creased up his face. “What?”

“Keep a lookout,” she insisted, pushing her way through the passive onlookers. “Don’t let your guard down.” She got annoyed looks, irate looks. Ignored them all as she barged up to Elston. “Breathe in,” she told him.

His concerned expression turned to ire. “What?”

“Breathe in through your nose, right now! Tell me what you smell.”

Further admonishment died as he realized what she was saying. He stood very still and drew down a long breath, sniffing. She saw the moment he smelled it, saw the shock appear on his face. “Nobody move,” he ordered. “Legionnaires, assume a guard position around us. Scan the camp, please. This is a combat lockdown situation. Everybody not at the accident remain where you are, link your position to Lieutenant Botin immediately.”

Luther’s whimpering was the only sound as the Legionnaires on patrol moved in, circling the group. More armor-suited figures moved in the distance, heading for the mess tent and the shacks; weapons active, small ruby laser fans sweeping through the silent snowfall.

“Sample it,” Angela said. “Fast.” Already the scent was fading, scattered by soft drifting snowflakes and icy gusts.

Elston nodded and opened a micro link to Marvin. A minute later the door on mobile biolab-1 unlocked and slid back. Marvin hurried over. When he arrived he went into a huddle with Elston, and the two of them walked over to the patch of snow where the Tropic had struck Luther. Marvin started waving a long plastic sampling wand around. Elston was studying the ground.

“I want everyone back into the mess tent,” Lieutenant Botin announced. “Corporal, you and Leora will accompany the medic team back to the clinic.”

Angela started walking back to Elston.

“That includes you, Tramelo,” Botin said sharply.

“You need me out here,” she said.

“Okay,” Elston said reluctantly. “But you do as you’re told.”

“Sure. But hurry, it can’t be far away.”

Elston bent down to talk to Luther. “What happened?”

“Easy on him,” Doc Coniff said sharply.

“That can wait,” Elston snapped back. “Luther, what happened. Concentrate. Did you slip?”

Luther’s face was shining with perspiration. Through the pain he tried to focus, to remember. “I … I don’t know. I thought there was someone there. Perhaps. Oh shit it hurts.”

“Did they push you?”

Mark Chitty cut away the last of the trousers, revealing mangled flesh and exposed bone of the shattered hip. Luther howled as a couple of instruments were applied.

“Try and stay still,” the doc urged. “I know it hurts, but we’ve got sheathe it now to get you back to the clinic.”

“How bad?” Luther grunted between clenched teeth.

“Don’t worry, I can set the bone and realign the muscle tissue. Now keep quiet.” At that she glared at Elston.

“Olrg?” Elston demanded. “Did you see anyone with him? Anything?”

“I didn’t even see him, not really, not until he stumbled in front of the Tropic. He was on the side of the track. I braked, but the wheels didn’t grip properly. I wasn’t going fast, really, Colonel. I wasn’t.”

“I know, but think, you must have noticed Luther, even if you weren’t concentrating on him directly. Was he alone?”

“Oh dear God …” Olrg was looking down at Luther, frantic at the suffering he’d caused. “Maybe. I thought—there might have been someone beside him. It was snowing. I was focused on the track.”

“Send me your visual memory,” Elston said.

It was like he’d slapped Olrg. For a moment the man was in as much pain as Luther. “Sir, I didn’t have my cache running, sir.”

“Oh for—” Elston glared. “I thought I made protocol quite clear?”

“Yes, sir, you did sir. It’s just that the grid makes it difficult to see in snow. And …” He gestured around at the big flakes that filled the air.

“Then just cancel the grid. You don’t close down your whole iris smartcells function. Come on! This isn’t gateway science.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Get back to the mess tent. I’ll deal with you later.”

Angela watched Olrg walk off into the swirling of snow, shoulders hunched, head down. The wind was picking up, she saw, the snow getting thicker. Her own grid showed her the Legionnaires’ tags as they spiraled out across the camp. They wouldn’t find anything, she knew; they hadn’t before in clear weather with Wukang’s sensors fully operational. “Did you catch anything?” she asked Marvin.

“Inconclusive,” he said. “I’m picking up micro quantities of St. Libra’s usual atmospheric contaminants, but no specific molecular signature stands out. It’s just the residuals of the jungle spores.”

“Angela was right,” Elston said. “I smelled it, too. That thing was here.”

They all looked down at Luther. Chitty had managed to cover the damaged hip and thigh with some kind of thick sleeve, while the doc had gotten an IV collar attached to his neck.

“He was lucky Olrg is actually quite a good driver,” Marvin said. “It could have been a lot worse.”

Angela took one corner of the stretcher, with Elston, Marvin, and Chitty taking the others. Lieutenant Botin himself provided their escort, while the doc fussed over Luther the whole time. It was only a couple of hundred meters to the clinic, but every step twisted up her alarm. The gloomy pink light filled the camp with desultory shadows.
It
could be lurking in any one of them. And the snow was getting worse. There could be an army of them out there, obscured by the chill dark silence. Waiting. Her mind had no trouble filling the dim void around her with the monsters, all of them flexing their blade fingers, ready to resume the battle she’d fled from twenty years ago.

A rectangle of white light spilled out from the clinic’s open door. The other paramedic, Juanitar Sakur, hurried down the Qwik-Kabin’s steps to help them carry Luther into the assessment center. Angela stood back once they’d gotten the sedated catering supervisor on the gurney, and Coniff started working on him. She found it strange being in the clinic with its warm air and bright white light. It was an enclave of real life. Her fear of what lurked outside its thin composite walls abated. Which was foolish, she knew.

“Now what?” Angela said. “You can’t keep the Legionnaires out there. The network’s failing, we don’t have a sensor mesh working that’s worth a damn. If that thing can walk into the camp in what’s left of our daylight and push one of us under a Land Rover, then it can leap out on them without any trouble.”

“I am aware of our tactical situation,” Elston said calmly. “Lieutenant, the AAV team report that this snowstorm is going to be the worst yet. The e-Ray weather radar is showing some bad cloud and wind approaching us. We have about an hour and a half to get everyone inside and batten down the hatches.”

“Yes, sir,” Botin said.

“How bad?” Angela asked.

“We’re facing blizzard conditions,” Elston said. “So each dome will have to become self-sufficient for the duration. Angela, I want you to organize food allocation for everyone. We’ll ride this out in the clinic and the domes. Marvin, get the biolabs driven over to the domes, and park them close; the xenobiology team can live in them for the time being. It’ll free up a little space inside the domes, too, which will be more pleasant for everybody. Everything else, we’ll shut down.”

“A blizzard?” Angela said. “Son-of-a-bitch, we’re already half a meter deep in snow.”

“I noticed.”

It was a frantic hour. Elston wouldn’t let anyone outside without a Legionnaire escort, which restricted the amount of preparation they were able to make. Even so they managed to kit out the domes for a couple of days’ independence. Food packages were doled out. Power cables from the main fuel cells checked. Heaters the microfacture team had printed out were powered up. Chemical toilets were taken from the latrines and installed in the domes. Data cables were unspooled and plugged into the biolabs, giving the network cells a hardline link.

In the end Elston ordered all the ground vehicles to be driven over to the domes, and parked them in a picket ring with the two biolabs. The pilots protested that nothing was being done to protect the helicopters, but there wasn’t time to rig any kind of canopy over them.

With the xenobiology teams moving out of the domes to bunk in the biolabs, Angela had the opportunity to rearrange the dome accommodation. Even it up, Elston had told her, and give everyone a Legionnaire for protection.

“If you want me to switch domes, Lulu and I come as a pair,” Madeleine Hoque said through a link to Angela as her e-i started sending out the new lists. “Not negotiable. The poor thing is terrified.”

“All right, I’ll shift people around to make that happen.” Angela had to take a moment. It was the first time Madeleine had ever acknowledged her.

The two girls arrived at Angela’s dome carrying their kitbags, escorted by Omar. They’d just finished shutting down the kitchen equipment. Snow was dripping off their parkas and trousers, forming little puddles on the panel floor.

“Jesus, that’s bad weather,” Paresh said as he sealed up the inner and outer entrance curtains.

“I don’t think the mess tent is going to last,” Lulu announced as she unzipped her parka. “The snow is already making the roof sag. It’s going to rip again.”

“This kind of weather, we can live without it,” Paresh said.

“As long as the fuel cells keep working,” Omar said, helping Madeleine hang her kitbag on a ceiling hook.

“Will they?” a nervous Lulu asked.

“They’ll be fine,” Angela said. “Olrg told me they’re designed to keep operating in conditions a lot more hostile than this. I’m more worried about the e-Rays. If you check the telemetry, the closest one is showing some flight system problems. Hardly surprising, there’s a lot of electrical activity in these clouds.”

Lulu sank down on a cot and put her head in her hands. “Why don’t they just come and take us out of here?” she asked in a high, miserable voice.

“Hey, it’s okay,” Madeleine said, sitting beside her. “We get a break from cooking and cleaning for a day in here.” She nudged the girl. “With two Legionnaires to protect us. Isn’t that right, Omar?”

Omar gave Lulu a friendly smile. “Nothing bad going to get in here past me and Paresh. Depend on us, we won’t let you down. Know why?”

Lulu looked up at him and sniffed loudly. “Why?”

“We’re not officers.”

She managed a weak grin.

With only five cots occupying the floor, they started organizing their expanded living space, using a couple of cots as couches, putting the circular radiant heater in the middle where they could gather around to enjoy the warmth it gave off. The air temperature lifted to the point where they could strip off their outer layers, though everyone kept their armor vest on. A curtain was rigged around the chemical toilet. Angela kept herself permanently linked to the smartdust on the entrance curtains. The meshes would warn them of anything large coming through.

Elston linked to everyone individually, checking they were okay and inside as the winds began to build. “No one is to go outside until the blizzard is over,” he ordered. “If you have a medical emergency, you must be accompanied by a Legionnaire to go to the clinic.”

“He’s too paranoid,” Madeleine announced as she closed her micro link with Elston. “He should ease up and let people think for themselves.”

“There’s something dangerous out there,” Paresh said. “He’s worried about our safety.”

It was only the middle of the afternoon, but as she sealed up the entrance Angela had seen the last of the pink daylight abandoning the sky, so thick and oppressive were the snow clouds. They could hear the wind streaking past through the dome’s thin panels, a constant background snarl, interrupted occasionally by a
thump
as some piece of camp equipment broke loose or toppled over. The heavy plastic sheets used to cover the entrance thrummed steadily as the wind shook them, but the seals held. Both bright white lanterns hanging amid the bags swung in slow arcs, sending shadows swaying across the curving walls. Right in the middle of the dome, the circular radiant heater glowed a cozy orange.