buildings around her had been flattened into small hillocks of debris; of those that remained, few were left with roofs. Naked, heat-twisted girders skewered up into the gloomy sky. Black soot stains smeared over entire walls were already dissolving under the rain to reveal deep bullet pocks.
Marines began jumping down from the other trucks in the convoy. It was a familiar routine by now. Urban zones, whatever the size, were occupied by a garrison. They served as emergency reserves and staging post; also a transitory field hospital a lot of the time. The possessed weren’t giving up without a fight. The marine lieutenant in charge started shouting orders, and the troops fanned out to secure the perimeter. Elana and the other mercs began unloading their truck with the help of five mud-caked mechanoids.
First off was a programmable multipurpose silicon hall. An oval twenty-five metres long, with open archways along the sides. It was a standard Kulu Royal Marine corps issue, designed for tropical climates, with an overhang in anticipation of heavy showers, and allowing a constant breeze to filter through. Ordinarily ideal for a place like Mortonridge. Now, they were having to direct the mechanoids to bulldoze up a base from soil and stone which they then sealed over with fast-set polymer. It was the only way to keep the hall’s floor above mud level.
Once that was up, they started moving the zero-tau pods in. A double file of serjeants marched down the main street, escorting three possessed. Elana splashed out to greet them. She enjoyed this part of her duty.
One of the possessed had given up, a man in his late sixties. She’d seen that before. Filthy, torn clothes. Not bothering to heal his wounds. Even the rain was allowed to soak him. The other two were more typical. Dignity intact. Clothes immaculate, not a scratch on them. The rain bounced off as if they had a frictionless coating. Elana gave one of them a long look. A woman in a prim antique blue suit, white blouse with a lace collar, and pearl necklace. Her hair was a solid bottle blonde coiffure that could have been carved from rock for all the wind affected it. She gave Elana a single distasteful glance, defiantly arrogant.
Elana nodded affably at the serjeant guarding her, whose leg was wrapped in a medical package tube. “Humm, she’s the third one of these today. And I thought that woman was unique.”
“Excuse me?” the serjeant asked.
“They enjoy historical figures. I’ve been accessing my encylopedia’s history files ever since this campaign started, trying to place them. Hitlers are quite popular, so’s Napoleon and Richard Saldana, then there’s Cleopatra. Somebody called Ellen Ripley is a big favourite with the women, too; but none of my search programs have managed to track her down yet.”
The blue-suited woman looked dead ahead, and smiled a secret smile.
“Okay,” Elana said. “Bring them in.”
The mercenaries were hooking the zero-tau pods up to their power cells, datavising diagnostics through the management processors. Elana’s ELINT block gave a warning bleep. She rounded on the three prisoners, pulling a high-voltage shockrod from her belt. Her voice boomed out from her facial grille, echoing round the hall.
“Cut that out, shitbrains. You lost, and this is the end of the line. Too late to argue about it now. The serjeants might be too honourable and decent to fry your bodies, but I’m not. And this is my part of the operation. Got that?” The ELINT block quietened. “Good. Then we’ll get along just fine in your final minutes in this universe. Any last minute cigarettes, you can indulge yourselves. Otherwise just keep quiet.”
“I see you have found an occupation which obviously suits you.”
“Huh?” She glanced down at serjeant with the injured leg.
“We met at Fort Forward, just after arriving. I am Sinon.”
Her three claws snapped together with a loud
“We are identical.”
“Glad to see you survived. Though God knows how you managed it. Trying to storm ashore through that weather was the dumbest military decision since the Trojans took a shine to that horse.”
“I think you’re being unduly cynical.”
“Don’t give me that crap. You must have a decent dose of it too, if you’ve survived this long. Remember the oldest military rule, my friend.”
“Never volunteer for anything?”
“Generals always fuck up bad.”
The first zero-tau pod opened. Elana pointed her shock-rod at the blue-suited woman. “Okay, Prime Minister, you first.” Sinon kept the holding stick round her neck as she backed in. Metal manacles closed round her limbs, and Elana switched on a mild current. The woman glared out, her face drawn back with the effort of fighting the electricity.
“Just in case,” Elana told Sinon. “We had a few try to break free once they finally realize their number’s up. You can take the holding stick off now.” The clamp sprang open, and Sinon stood clear. “You going to leave all nice and voluntarily?” Elana asked. The front of the zero-tau pod was already swinging shut. The woman spat weakly. “Didn’t think so. Not you.”
The zero-tau pod turned midnight black. Elana heard a hiss of breath from one of the waiting possessed, but didn’t say anything.
“How long do you leave them in there?” Sinon asked.
“Cook them for about fifteen minutes. Then we open up to see if they’re done. If not, it’s just back in for progressively longer periods. I’ve had one hold out for about ten hours before, but that was the limit.”
“That sounds suspiciously like enjoyment to me.”
Elana waved the next possessed into his pod. “Nothing suspicious about it. General Hiltch, God fuck him, says I’m not allowed in the front line. So this is the second best duty as far as I’m concerned. I don’t take marine discipline too good. Sitting with a bunch of those pansy-asses in a place like this counting raindrops would have me thrown off-planet inside of a day. So as I’m technologically competent, me and my friends requested this placement. It works out fine. Army’s short of skilled techs who can also handle the noise if the possessed start to panic: we fit the bill. And this way I get to see the bastards booted out of their bodies. I
The second possessed was put in a zero-tau pod. He didn’t resist. Then the third zero-tau pod was activated. Elana aimed the shock rod at the last possessed, the apathetic one. “Hey, cheer up. This is your lucky day, looks like the reserves got called out. You’re on, kid.” He gave her a broken look and grimaced. His features melted, shrinking back to reveal a wizened face with anaemically pale skin.
“Catch him,” Elana yelled. The man’s legs buckled. He pitched forward into her arms. “Thought that one might quit,” she said in satisfaction.
Choma removed the holding stick’s clamp from around his neck. Elana eased him down onto the floor, calling for blankets and some pillows. “Damn it, we haven’t had time to unpack the medical gear yet,” she said. “And we’re going to need it. Those bastards.”
“What’s the matter?” Sinon asked.
Elana’s claw sliced through the man’s raggedy shirt, exposing his chest. There were strange ridges swelling out of his skin, mimicking the lines of muscle a healthy twenty-year-old mesomorph might have. When she prodded one with the tip of a claw, it sagged like a sack of jelly.
“They always go for perfection,” she explained to Sinon and Choma. “Assholes. I don’t know what that energistic power is, but it screws up their flesh real bad under the illusion. Sometimes you get fat deposits building up, that’s pretty harmless; but nine times out of ten, it’s tumours.”
“All of them?” Sinon asked.
“Yep. Never satisfied with what they’ve got. I’m sure it’s a metaphor for something, but I’m buggered if I can figure out what. We’re having to ship everyone who gets de-possessed back to Xingu and into one of the major hospitals. They’re overflowing already, and they don’t have enough nanonic packages to go around. Another week of this, and the entire Ombey system is going to go into medical meltdown. And that’s not taking you guys into account; you’re not exactly emerging unscathed from the Liberation.”
“Can we help?”
“Not a thing you can do, sorry. Now if you could clear out . . . I’ve got to try and organize some sort of transport for this batch. Hell, I wish we had hovercraft, they’re the only things that can travel properly over this swamp. That dickhead Hiltch won’t allow any planes in under the cloud yet.”
Sinon and Choma left her and another couple of mercenaries running medical scanners over the
