They’d only just made it, the sluggish river was leaking over the top of the track. At times it seemed as if the whole surface of the valley was on the move. They stood above the gurgling edge of the flow, and watched the gargantuan outpouring spread out to surge on across the lowlands.
“Fat lot of use that would be,” Franklin muttered grimly. “Everything’s heading down to the coast, and that’s where
“You are such a downer. I want some wheels, man. I have like totally had it with tramping through this shit.”
“I thought cars were spawned by the capitalist Establishment to promote our greed and distance us from nature,” Rana said sweetly. “I’m sure I heard somebody say that recently.”
Cochrane kicked at the fish flopping about round his feet. “Get off my back, prickly sister. Okay? I’m thinking of Moyo. He can’t handle this.”
“Just . . . quiet,” Stephanie said. Even she was waspish, fed up with the pettiness they were all displaying. The ordeal of the bus and then the track had stretched everyone’s nerves. “How are you?” she asked Moyo.
His face had returned to normal, the illusion swallowing his bandage and shielding his scabbed tissue from sight. Even his eyeballs appeared to dart about naturally. But he’d taken a lot of cajoling and encouragement to walk along the track. His thoughts had contracted, gathering round a centre of sullen self-pity. “I’ll be okay,” he mumbled. “Just get me out of this rain. I hate it.”
“Amen to that,” Cochrane chirped.
Stephanie looked round the shabby landscape. Visibility was still pretty ropy on the other side of their protective umbrella, though it was definitely lighter now. It was hard to believe this eternal featureless mire was the same vigorous green countryside they’d travelled across in the Karmic Crusader. “Well we can’t go that way,” she gestured at the cataract of muddy water rumbling away into the distance. “So I guess we’ll have to stick to this side. Anyone remember roughly where the road is?”
“Along there, I think,” McPhee said. Neither voice or mind-tone suggested much confidence in the claim. “There’s definitely a flat ledge. See? The carbon-concrete must have held up.”
“Till the foundation gets washed out from under it,” Franklin said.
Stephanie couldn’t honestly see any difference in the mud where he was pointing. “All right, we’ll go for it.”
“How far?” Tina demanded querulously. “And how long will it take to get there?”
“Depends where you’re heading, babe,” Cochrane said.
“Well I don’t know, do I? I wouldn’t ask if I did.”
“Any kind of building will do,” Stephanie said. “We can reinforce it against the weather ourselves. I just want us out of this. We can think what to do next when we’re rested up. Come on.” Stephanie gripped Moyo’s hand and began to walk in the direction the road was supposed to be. Fish tails slapped pitifully at her wellingtons.
“Oh man, it don’t make no difference what we decide. We know what’s like gonna happen.”
“Then stay here and let it,” Rana told the miserable hippie. She started off after Stephanie.
“I didn’t say I was in a rush.” The edge of the invisible shield moved towards Cochrane, and he scrambled after them.
“There was a village called Ketton on this road,” McPhee said. “I remember going through it before we turned off up to the farm.”
“How far?” Tina asked, her voice rising in hope.
Cochrane smiled happily. “Miles and miles, it’ll probably take us like about ten—twenty days.”
A ferocious jet of white fire squirted into the wall two metres above Sinon’s head. He flattened himself into the mud below as paint ignited and carbon-concrete blistered.
Coming from the shops, seventy metres right.it was hard to see with all the smoke mingling with the rain, but his retinas had a long purple after image scorched across them.
Got it,kerrial answered.
The white fire expanded into a thin circular sheet, rivulets trickled down, their tips wriggling purposefully towards Sinon. “Shit.” If he stayed the fire would get him, if he moved he’d lose the cover which the wall provided. And there must be several of them in the shops; two other serjeants were under attack as well.
Eayres was a nothing village in the guidance block’s memory. A cluster of houses clumped round a road junction, its population mostly employed by the local marble quarry. Who would expect the possessed to make a stand here? Expect the unexpected, Choma had chanted happily when the white fireballs burst open amid the squad.
Sinon saw Kerrial swing himself into position, bringing his machine gun to bear on the shops in the middle of the village. Bullet craters slammed across the brickwork in front of him. Then his body was being flung back, nerve channels shutting down. Blackness. Kerrial’s memories arose from his neural array to be absorbed by an orbiting voidhawk.
They’ve got guns!sinon broadcast.
Yes,choma said. I saw.
Where did they get them from?
This is the countryside, hunting is a sport here. Besides, did you think we had a monopoly?
The white fire rivulets had reached the ground. Steam roared up as they floated sinuously along the top of the mud towards Sinon. He scrambled to his feet, and jumped forward. The white fire behind him vanished. Another, brighter, spear lanced out of a shop’s fractured window. He hit the mud, rolling desperately as he brought his grenade launcher to bear.
You’ll kill them,choma warned. sinon’s right leg went dead as the white fire engulfed it. He slamfired the launcher, hand pumping the mechanism with cyborg intent.
Grenades thudded into the upper floor of the shop, detonating instantly. The ceiling split open, hurling down a torrent of rubble as the roof caved in. Three radiant lines of machine gun fire poured through the ground floor windows and into the tumult inside. The white fire evaporated into tiny violet wisps, splattering off Sinon’s leg. He scrambled up, and pushed himself hard for the buildings dead ahead, dragging his useless leg along. Crashing through the first door to land in a deserted bar.
Clever,choma said. I think that’s got them cold.
The white fire had gone out everywhere. Serjeants converged on the little row of prim shops, walking forwards steadily, firing their machine guns continually. The squad had responded to the possessed like antibodies reacting to an incursive virus. Flowing in towards the village from both sides, the reserve squad racing forward. A miniature version of the noose contracting around Mortonridge. They had it encircled within minutes. Then began their advance.
Seventeen of them walked through the smoke that whirled along Main Street, impervious to the flames roaring out of the buildings all around. Their gunfire was concentrated on the shops, aiming their vivid bullets through any gap they could find. Weird lights flickered inside, as if someone had activated a nightclub hologram rig. Steam fountained out through windows and cracks in the wall.
“All right. Enough.
The ring of serjeants held their places ten metres from the central shop, feet apart, juddering in time to the roaring guns.
“ENOUGH. We surrender.” The machine guns fell silent.
Lumps of stone stirred on the mound of rubble which had been the shop’s upper floor, spinning down to splash into the ubiquitous mire. Limbs began to emerge amid a welter of coughing. Six possessed squirmed free, holding up their hands and blinking uncomfortably. More serjeants moved forwards to clamp their necks with holding sticks.
Elana Duncan reached Eayres two hours later. The fires were out by then, extinguished by the rain. She whistled appreciatively as she climbed out of the truck, a sound violent enough to make the marines wince. “Must have been a hell of a fight,” she said in envy. The trucks had halted in the village’s main street. Over half of the
