The Eternal War

He picked his white helmet up and put it on, tightened the strap beneath his chin and then took a step up the ladder and out of the trench so that he could be seen more clearly.

‘Halt!’ he called out to the woman, his carbine in his hands but aimed at the ground. She was hardly a threat, after all.

The woman kept walking purposefully towards him, oblivious to his challenge. Closer now, he could see she was wearing a Confederate-grey officer’s cape. More than that … he could see she was quite beautiful — the face of an angel, pale and smooth, long dark hair cascading down her shoulders.

‘Miss!’ he called out again, then almost apologetically: ‘I’m going to have to ask you to stop where you are!’

Her stride remained unbroken and now she was off the track and clambering up the bank of rubble towards him.

‘Miss! Please!’ He found himself reluctantly raising his carbine. ‘I need you to stop right where you are, love!’

Closer now, just a dozen yards, climbing steadily up skittering rubble towards him. She was smiling.

Sutter wondered whether this was a wind-up. Or perhaps a test. He knew this area of the line was being inspected for battle-readiness. If so, he’d already let this young lady get far too close. He was going to get a sharp rebuke if this was a test.

‘Halt or I shall fire!’ he challenged, angry with himself.

This time she did finally stop. Another six yards uphill, four or five more strides, and she’d have been right beside him.

‘Identify yourself!’ Sutter barked.

Her smile widened. ‘My name is Becks.’

Her cape flapped. He thought a breeze had caught it, lifted it. It was only as something glinted in the air between them that he understood it was the movement of her arms that had stirred the cape.

Sutter felt a punch in his throat that left him winded, gasping for air. He dropped the carbine, his hands reaching up to work out why his open mouth didn’t seem to be letting in a breath. Then he felt something odd sticking out. He looked down to see the hilt of a bayonet protruding from beneath his chin.

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