“Oh God it hurts.” Brendon coughed again, a hoarse croaking sound.
“We’ve got to get him out,” Bev said.
“I don’t get any response from his neural nanonics,” Erick said. “I’m trying to datavise them through the airlock tube’s processor but there isn’t even a carrier code acknowledgement.”
“Erick, he’s in trouble!”
“We don’t know that!”
“Look at him.”
“Look at Lalonde. They can build rivers of light in the sky. Faking up one injured crewman isn’t going to tax them.”
“For God’s sake.” Bev stared at the holoscreen. Brendon was juddering, one hand holding a grab loop as he vomited. Sallow globules of fluid burped out of his mouth, splashing and sticking to the dull-silver wall of the tube opposite.
“We don’t even know if he’s alone,” Erick said. “The hatch into the spaceplane isn’t shut. It won’t respond to my orders. I can’t even shut it, let alone codelock it.”
“Captain,” Bev datavised. “We can’t just leave him in there.”
“Erick is quite right,” Andrй replied regretfully. “This whole incident is highly suspicious. It is convenient for somebody who wants to get inside the ship. Too convenient.”
“He’s dying!”
“You may not enter the airlock while the hatch into the spaceplane remains open.”
Bev looked round the utilitarian lower deck in desperation. “All right. How about this? Erick goes up into the lounge and codelocks that hatch behind him, leaving me in here. That way I can take a medical nanonic in to Brendon, and I can check out the spaceplane cabin to make sure there aren’t any xenoc invaders on board.”
“Erick?” Andrй asked.
“I’ve no objection.”
“Very well. Do it.”
Erick swam up into the empty lounge, and poised himself on the ladder. Bev’s face was framed by the floor hatch, grinning up at him. “Good luck,” Erick said. He datavised a codelock at the hatch’s seal processor, then turned the manual fail-safe handle ninety degrees.
Bev twisted round as soon as the carbotanium square closed. He pulled a medical nanonic package from a first aid case on the wall. “Hold on, Brendon. I’m coming in.” Red environmental warning lights were flashing on the panel beside the circular airlock tube hatch. Bev datavised his override authority into the management processor, and the hatch began to swing back.
Erick opened a channel into the lounge’s communication net processor, and accessed the lower deck cameras. He watched Bev screw up his face as the fumes blew out of the open hatchway. Emerald green light flared out of the spaceplane’s cabin, sending a thick, blindingly intense beam searing along the airlock tube to wash the lower deck. Caught full square, Bev yelled, his hands coming up instinctively to cover his eyes. A ragged stream of raw white energy shot along the centre of the green light, smashing into him.
The camera failed.
“Bev!” Erick shouted. He sent a stream of instructions into the processor. A visualization of the lower deck’s systems materialized, a ghostly reticulation of coloured lines and blinking symbols.
“Erick, what’s happening?” Andrй demanded.
“They’re in! They’re in the fucking ship. Codelock all the hatches now. Now, God damn it!”
The schematic’s coloured lines were vanishing one by one. Erick stared wildly at the floor, as if he could see what was happening through the metal decking. Then the lounge lights went out.
“Five minutes until we land at our new drop zone, and the tension in the cabin is really starting to bite,” Kelly Tirrel subvocalized into a neural nanonics memory cell. “We know something has happened to at least five other spaceplanes. What everyone is now asking themselves is, will the extra distance protect us? Do the invaders only operate below their protective covering of red cloud?”
She accessed the spaceplane’s sensors to observe the magnificent, monstrous spectacle again. Thousand- kilometre-long bands of glowing red nothingness suspended in the air. Astounding. This far inland they were slim and complex, interwoven like the web of a drunken spider above the convoluted tributaries. When she had seen them from orbit, calm and regular, they had intimidated her; up close and churning like this they were just plain frightening.
Coiling belts were edge-on with the starboard wing, growing larger as they spun through the sky towards the spaceplane. It was an excellent image, a little bit too realistic for peace of mind. But then the spaceplane’s sensor array was all military-grade. Long streamlined recesses on both sides of the fuselage belly were now holding tapering cylindrical weapons pods—maser cannons providing a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree cover, an electronic warfare suite, and a stealth envelope. They weren’t quite an assault fighter, but neither were they a sitting duck like some of the spaceplanes.
Typical that Joshua would have a multi-role spaceplane. No! Thank God Joshua had a multi-role spaceplane.
Forty minutes into the descent, and already she missed him. You’re so weak, she swore at herself.
Kelly was starting to have serious second thoughts about the whole assignment. Like all war correspondents, she supposed. Being on the ground was very different to sitting in the office anticipating being on the ground. Especially with the appearance of that red cloud.
The seven mercenaries had discussed that appearance ad nauseam the whole way in from the emergence point. Reza Malin, the team’s leader, had seemed almost excited by the prospect of venturing below it. Such adverse circumstances were a challenge, he said. Something new.
She had taken time to get to know all of them reasonably well. So she knew what Reza said wasn’t simple bravado. He had been a Confederation Navy Marine at one time. An officer, she guessed; he wasn’t very forthcoming about that period of his life, nor subsequent contracts as a marshal on various stage one colony planets. But he must have been good at the second oldest profession, money in large quantities had paid for a considerable number of physical enhancements and alterations. Now he was one of the elite. Like a cosmonik, blurring the line between machine and human. The kind of hyper-boosted composite the mundane troops stored in zero-tau on the
Reza Malin retained a basic humanoid shape, although he was now two metres tall, and proportionally broad. His skin was artificial, a tough neutral grey-blue impact-resistant composite with a built-in chameleon layer. He didn’t bother with clothes any more, and there were no genitalia (rather, no external genitalia, Kelly recorded faithfully). Cybernetic six-finger claws replaced his natural hands. Both forearms were wide, with integral small- calibre gaussrifles, his skeleton rigged to absorb recoil. Like Warlow, his face was incapable of expression. Black glass bubble-shields covered both eyes; the nose was now a flat circular intake which could filter chemical and biological agents. The back and sides of his bald skull were studded with a row of five sensor implants, smooth centimetre-wide ulcerlike bulges.
Despite the lack of expression, she learned a lot from his voice, which was still natural. Reza wasn’t easily flustered. That and a civilized competence, the way the other six followed his orders without question, gave her more confidence than she would otherwise have had in the scouting mission. In the final analysis, she realized, she trusted him with her life.
The spaceplane banked sharply. Kelly was aware of Ashly Hanson focusing the optical sensors on a small river three kilometres below. The silvery water had a curious speckling of white dots.
“What does he think he’s doing?” Pat Halahan asked. The team’s second in command was sitting in the seat next to her. A ranger-scout, as he described himself, slimmer and smaller than Reza, but with the same blue-grey skin, and powerful adipose legs. Each forearm had twin wrists, one for ordinary hands, one a power data socket for plug-ins—weapons or sensors. His senses were all enhanced, with a raised rim of flesh running from the corner of his eyes right around the back of his skull.
“Hey, what’s happening, Ashly?” he called out. Electronic warfare was a thought all the mercenaries were sharing.
“I’m going to land us here,” Ashly said.
“Any particular reason?” Reza Malin asked with quiet authoritativeness. “The surveyed back-up landing site
