“On foot?” Ralph queried.
“Yes. The AIs loaded travel proscription orders into all the processor controlled vehicles in the town. Some people will be
able to break the order’s code, of course. But basically the only mechanical transport left in Exnall right now are the bicycles.”
“So where are all the pedestrians going?”
“Some are taking the main link road to the M6, but it looks like the majority are heading for the town centre. I’d say they’re
probably converging on the police station.”
“Damn it, that’s all we need. If they congregate in a crowd there’s no way we’ll be able to stop the possession from spreading.
It’ll be like a plague.”
• • •
Frank Kitson was angry in a way he hadn’t been for years. Angry, and just a bit alarmed, too. First, woken up in the dead
of night by a priority message from some O’Meara woman he’d never heard of. Which turned out to be a paranoid fantasy about
xenoc takeovers and martial law. Then when he tried to datavise the police station about it he couldn’t get through to the
duty officer. So he’d seen the lights on next door, and datavised old man Yardly to see if he knew what was going on. Yardly
had received the same priority datavise, as had some of his family, and he couldn’t get through to the police either.
Frank didn’t want to make a fool of himself by appearing panicky, but something odd was definitely going down. Then the communications
net crashed. When he accessed the general household processor for an emergency channel to the police station there was an
official message in the processor’s memory from Chief Inspector Latham announcing the curfew, setting out its rules, and assuring
all the citizens they would be evacuated in the morning. Genuinely worried now, Frank told his little family to get ready,
they were leaving right away.
The car processor refused to acknowledge his datavise. When he switched the car to manual override, it still wouldn’t function.
That was when he set off to find a police officer and demand to be told just what the hell was going on. It was a few minutes
short of one o’clock when the curfew was officially due to start. And in any case, he was an upstanding subject of the King,
he had every right to be on the street. The curfew couldn’t possibly apply to him.
A lot of other people seemed to have the same idea. Quite a group of them marched down the wide road out of their tranquil
residential suburb heading for the town centre, shoulders set squarely against the night air. Some people had brought their
kids, the children sleepy, their voices piping and full of queries. Comments were shouted back and forth, but no one had any
answers to what was actually going on.
Frank heard someone call his name, and saw Hanly Nowell making his way towards him.
“Hell of a thing,” he told Hanly. They worked for the same agrichemical company; different divisions, but they drank together
some nights, and their two families went on joint outings occasionally.
“Sure.” Hanly looked distracted. “Did your car pack up?”
Frank nodded, puzzled by how low Hanly was keeping his voice, almost as if he didn’t want to be overheard. “Yes, some kind
of official traffic division override in the processor. I didn’t even know they could do that.”
“Me neither. But I’ve got my four-wheeler. I can bypass the processor in that, go straight to manual drive.”
They both stopped walking. Frank threw cautious glances at the rest of the loose group as they passed by.
“Room in it for you and the family,” Hanly said when the stragglers had moved away.
“You serious?” Maybe it was the thick grey tree shadows which flapped across the street creating confusing movements of half-light,
but Frank was sure Hanly’s face was different somehow. Hanly always smiled, or grinned, forever happy with life. Not tonight,
though.
Guess it’s getting to him, too.
“Wouldn’t have offered otherwise,” Hanly said generously.
“God, thanks, man. It’s not for me. I’m scared for the wife and Tom, you know?” “I know.”
“I’ll go back and get them. We’ll come around to your place.”
“No need.” And now Hanly was smiling. He put an arm around Frank’s shoulders. “I’m parked just around the corner. Come on,
we’ll drive back to your house. Much quicker.”
Hanly’s big offroad camper was sitting behind a thick clump of ancient harandrids in a small park. Invisible from the street.
“You thought about where we can go to get clear?” Frank asked. He was keeping his own voice low now. There were still little
groups of people walking about through the suburb, all making their way to the town centre. Most of them would probably appreciate
a ride out, and wouldn’t be too fussy how they got it. He was bothered by how furtive and uncharitable he’d become. Focusing
on survival must do that to a man.
“Not really.” Hanly opened the rear door and gestured Frank forwards. “But I expect we’ll get there anyway.”
Frank gave him a slightly stiff smile and climbed in. Then the door banged shut behind him, making him jump. It was pitch
black inside. “Hey, Hanly.” No answer. He pushed at the door, pumping the handle, but it wouldn’t open. “Hanly, what the hell
you doing, man?”
Frank had the sudden, awful realization that he wasn’t alone inside the camper. He froze, spread-eagle against the door. “Who’s
there?” he whispered.
“Just us chickens, boss.”
Frank whirled around as a fearsome green-white light bloomed inside the camper. Its intensity made him squeeze his eyes tight
shut, fearing for his retinas. But not before he’d seen the sleek wolverine creatures launching themselves at him, their huge
fangs dripping blood.
• • •
From his seat in the situation management room, Neville Latham could hear the crowd outside the police station. They produced
an unpleasant ebb and flow of sound which lapped at the building, its angry tone plain for all to hear.
The final impossibility: a mob in Exnall! And while he was supposed to be enforcing a curfew. Dear Lord.
“You must disperse them,” Landon McCullock datavised. “They cannot be allowed to group together for any length of time, it
would be a disaster.”
“Yes, sir.” How? he wanted to shout at his superior. I’ve only got five officers left in the station. “How long before the
marines land?”
“Approximately four minutes. But, Neville, I’m not allowing them in to the town itself. Their priority is to establish a secure
perimeter. I have to think of the whole continent. What’s loose in Exnall cannot be allowed out.”
“I understand.” He glanced at the desktop processor’s AV projector which was broadcasting Exnall’s status display. The SD
sensor satellite wasn’t producing as many details as he would have liked, but the overall summary was accurate enough. Approximately
six hundred people were milling along Maingreen outside the station, with dribs and drabs still arriving. Neville made his
decision and datavised the communications block for a channel to each patrol car.
It was all over now, anyway: career, retirement prospects, probably his friends, too. Ordering the police to open fire with
sonics on his own townsfolk wouldn’t make the recriminations appreciably worse. And it would be helping them, even though
they’d never appreciate the fact.
• • •
Eben Pavitt had arrived at the police station ten minutes ago, and still hadn’t managed to get anywhere near the doors to
make his complaint. Not that it would do him much good if he had got up there. He could see those at the front of the building
hammering away at the thick glass doors to no avail. If that pompous dickbrain Latham was in there, he wasn’t doing his duty
and talking to the crowd.
It was beginning to look like his walk (two bloody kilometres, dressed in a thin T-shirt and shorts) had all been for nothing.
How utterly bloody typical that Latham should bungle tonight. Ineffective warnings. Sloppy organization. Cutting people off
from the net. The chief inspector was supposed to be helping the town, for crying out loud.
By God, my MP is going to hear about this.
If I get out in one piece.
Eben Pavitt glanced uneasily at his fellow townsfolk. There was a constant derisory shouting now. Several stones had been
thrown at the police station. Eben disapproved of that, but he could certainly understand the underlying frustration.
Even Maingreen’s overhead streetlights seemed to be sharing the town’s malaise, they weren’t as bright as usual. Away in the
distance, above the fringes of the crowd, he could see several of them flickering.
He wasn’t going to achieve anything here. Perhaps he should have hiked straight out of town? And it still wasn’t too late,
if he started now.
As he turned around and started to push his way through the press of aggrieved people, he thought he saw a large flyer curving
through the sky above the western edge of town. Trees and the wayward streetlights swiftly cut it from his view, but there
wasn’t much else that gold-haze blob could be. And the size could only mean a military transport of some kind.
He grinned secretively. The government was doing something positive. Perhaps all was not lost after all.
Then he heard the sirens. Patrol cars were racing along Maingreen, approaching the crowd from both ends. Those people around
him were straining to catch a glimpse of the latest distraction.
“LEAVE THE AREA,” an amplified voice bellowed from the police station. “THE TOWN IS NOW UNDER MARTIAL LAW. RETURN HOME AND
REMAIN THERE UNTIL YOU RECEIVE FURTHER INSTRUCTIONS.”
Eben was sure the distorted voice belonged to Neville Latham.
The first patrol cars braked dangerously close to people on the edge of the main crowd, as if their safety systems had somehow
become uncoupled. Several jumped clear hurriedly, two or three lost their footing and fell over. One man was struck by a patrol
car, sending him cannoning into a woman. They both went sprawling.
A deluge of boos were directed at the patrol cars. Eben didn’t like the mood which was emerging among his fellow citizens.
These weren’t the usual peaceable Exnall residents. And the police reaction was unbelievably provocative. A lifelong law abider,
Eben was shocked by their actions. “LEAVE THE AREA NOW. THIS IS AN ILLEGAL ASSEMBLY.”
A single lump of stone tumbled through the air above the bobbing heads of the crowd. Eben never did see the arm which flung
it. One thing remained certain, though, it was thrown with incredible force. When it hit the patrol car it actually managed
to fracture the bonded silicon windscreen.
Several taunting cheers went up. Suddenly the air was thick with improvised missiles raining down on the patrol cars.
The response was predictable, and immediate. A couple of assault mechanoids emerged from the rear of each patrol car. Sense-overload
ordnance shot out, red flares slicing brilliant ephemeral archways across the stars.
They should have been warning shots. The mechanoids had a direct-attack prohibition loaded into their processors which only
Neville Latham could cancel.
The ordnance activated two metres above the compressed bustle of bodies at the heart of the crowd. The effect was almost as
bad as if live ammunition had been fired straight at them.
Eben saw men and women keel over as though they’d been electrocuted. Then his eyes were streaming from intolerable light and
wickedly acidic gas. Human screams vanished beneath a hyper-decibel whistle. His neural nanonics sensorium filter programs
were unable to cope (as the ordnance designers intended), leaving him blind, deaf, and virtually insensate. Heavy bodies thudded
into him, sending him spinning, stumbling for balance. Pinpricks of heat bloomed across his bare skin, turning to vicious
stings. He felt his flesh ballooning, body swelling to twice, three times its normal size. Joints were seizing up.
Eben thought he was screaming. But there was no way to tell. The solid sensations, when they started to return, were crude
ones. His bare legs scraping over damp grass. Limp arms banging against his side. He was being dragged along the ground by
his collar.
When he’d regained enough rationality to look around, the scenes of suffering on Maingreen outside the police station made
him want to weep with rage and helplessness. The crazed assault mechanoids were still pummelling people with their ordnance
from point-blank range. A direct hit brought instant death, for those nearby the activation it was outright torture.
“Bastards,” Eben rasped. “You bastards.”
“Pigs are always the same.”
He looked up at the man who was pulling him away from the melee. “Christ, thanks, Frank. I could have died if I’d stayed in
there.”
“Yeah, I suppose you could have,” Frank Kitson said. “Lucky I came along, really.”
• • •
The police hypersonic landed next to the five big marine troop flyers. They were strung out along the link road which connected
Exnall to the M6; a quintet of dark, menacingly obese arachnids whose landing struts had dinted the carbon concrete. The start
of the town’s harandrid forest was two hundred metres away, a meticulous border where the aboriginal trees finished and the
cultivated citrus groves began.
As he came down the hypersonic’s airstairs, Ralph’s suit sensors showed him the marine squads fanning out along the edge of
the trees. Some kind of barrier had already been thrown across the road itself. So far a perfect deployment.
The marine colonel, Janne Palmer, was waiting for Ralph in the command cabin of her flyer. It was a compartment just aft of
the cockpit with ten communications operatives, and three tactical interpretation officers. Even though it was inside and
well protected, the colonel was wearing a lightweight armour suit like the rest of her brigade. Her shell helmet was off,
showing Ralph a surprisingly feminine face. The only concession to military life appeared to be her hair, which was shaved
down to a two-millimetre stubble of indeterminable colour. She gave him a fast nod of acknowledgement as he was escorted in
by a young marine.
“I accessed a recording of the operation at Moyce’s,” she said. “These are one tough set of people we’ve got here.”