Sinon wished it hadn’t bothered. They were poised just outside the town, not far above the sea. Cover was ostensibly provided
by a spinney of fallen Fellots. None of the sturdy aboriginal trees remained standing; their dense fan-shaped branches had
cushioned the way the trunks fell, leaving them at crazy angles. Rain kept their upper sections clean from the cloying mud,
giving the cerise bark a glossy sheen. Choma was pressed up against a fat trunk at the edge of the spinney, waving a sensor
block slowly ahead of him. The whole squad hooked in to the block’s bitek processor, examining the buildings ahead through
a variety of wavelengths.
Not even the money lavished on Billesdon’s infrastructure had saved it from the rain. The terraces and groves above had dissolved,
sending waves of mud slithering down into the prim streets, clogging the drains within minutes. Water raced along the roads
and pavements, submerging tarmac and grass alike before it poured over the quayside wall. There were no boats left in the
harbour; every single craft had been used to evacuate the population before Ekelund’s invasion reached the coast. In theory,
that left the basin clear for the Liberation’s landing boats to bring the occupation troops and support materiel ashore.
Seems deserted,
Choma said.
Nothing moving,
Sinon agreed,
but infrared’s useless in all this rain. There could be thousands of them tucked up nice and dry waiting for us.
Look on the bright side, the water should foul up that white fire of theirs.
Maybe, but that still leaves them with a whole load of options to use against us.
That’s good, keep thinking like that. Paranoia keeps you on your toes.
Thank you.
So what do you want to do now? Simple. We’re going to have to go in and check it out one house at a time. Okay, that’s what
I signed up for.
They discussed it with the other squads encircling the town. Search areas were designated, tactics coordinated, blockades
established on the main roads. Guyana was alerted that they were going in, and readied the low orbit SD platforms to provide
groundstrike support if called for.
The outskirts ahead of Sinon were modest houses overlooking the harbour, home to the fishing families. They had large gardens,
which had been completely washed away. Long tongues of mud-slimed debris were stretched down the slope, with small streams
running down their centres where the water had gouged a channel into the sandy soil. Cover between the spinney and the first
house was nonexistent, so the squad moved forwards with long gaps between each member. If the white fire did burst down on
them, it would never be able to reach more than one at a time. Hopefully.
Sinon was third in the line. He held his machine gun ready, crouched low to provide the smallest possible target. Ever since
they came ashore, he’d been thankful that his serjeant body had an exoskeleton; the rain didn’t bother him as much as it would
if he had ordinary skin. Body armour had been considered and rejected, it had never been any good against the white fire before.
The one concession they all made were shoes, a kind of sandal with deep-tread soles to give them traction.
Even so, it was hard to keep his feet from slipping as he hurried forward through the mud. The first house was ten metres
ahead of him: a white box with long silvered windows and a large first floor balcony at the rear. Water poured out of the
sagging guttering, diluting the slowmoving sludge that percolated round the base of the walls. He kept sweeping the machine
gun nozzle across the facing wall, alert for any sign of motion from inside. Out in the open, wind was driving the rain straight
at him. Even his body was aware of how cold it was; not that it was affecting his performance, not yet. Sensor blocks dangled
from his belt, unused and redundant as he urged himself on. His training was his one and only defence now.
Choma had already reached the house ahead of him, ducking down to crawl under the windows. Sinon reached the back wall, and
started to follow his friend along the side of the house. It was important to keep moving, not clump together. Palm fronds
and limp knots of grass wrapped themselves round his ankles, slowing him. When he reached the largest window, he took one
of the sensor blocks from his belt, and gingerly pressed it to the pane. The block relayed a slightly misty image of the room
inside. A lounge, cosy, with worn furniture and framed family holograms on the wall. Water was spraying out of the ceiling’s
central light fitting; the floor was invisible under a layer of mud which had pushed in from the hallway. An infrared scan
showed no hot-spots.
Clean downstairs,
he said.
And my ELINT block is clear. Looks like nobody’s home.
We need to be sure,
Choma replied.
Check out the upper floor. I’ll back you.
Sinon stood up, shouldering the machine gun. He took out a fission blade and sliced through the window frame, cutting out
the lock. Raindrops sizzled on the glowing blade. The next two serjeants in his squad had already reached the house when he
slipped inside. He pushed out a heavy breath from his lungs, the nearest he could get to a sigh. Actually out of the rain.
Its impact was diminished to a dull drum roll on the roof. Choma splashed down into the thin mire beside him.
Hell, that’s better.
Affinity made Sinon aware of the rest of the squad; two of them were in the neighbouring houses, while the rest had started
to spread out along the street.
My ELINT’s still clear,
he said.
Choma looked up at the ceiling, pointing his machine gun at it cautiously.
Yes. I’m pretty sure there’s nobody up there, but we’ve still got to check.
Sinon made his way out into the hall, machine gun held ready.
How can you be sure? You don’t know what’s up there.
Instinct.
Crazy.
He put his foot on the first step, sandal sole making a squelching sound against the sodden carpet.
We’ve barely got imagination operating inside these neural arrays, let alone an intuitive function.
Then I suggest you work one up fast, you’re going to need it.
Sinon turned so he could cover the landing as he ascended. Nothing moved except for the unending water, glistening as it ran
down walls, curdling across carpets and tile floors, dripping from furniture. He reached the main bedroom, its door ajar.
His foot kicked it hard, dinting the wood. The door slammed back amid a shower of droplets. Choma was right: it was empty.
In every room, the signs of panicked departure. Drawers ransacked, clothes scattered about.
Nobody here,
Sinon reported to the squad when they cleared the front bedroom. Other house searches across the town were also proving negative
as the squads moved in.
Ghost town,
Choma said, chortling.
I think you could find a better phrase.
He looked down through the window, seeing squad members scuttling along the road outside. They were going against the flow
of mud, their legs churning up deep eddies. Things were trundling along the street, carried along by the relentless current.
Bulges in the smooth mud; there was no way of telling if they were stones or crumpled twigs. All of them moved at the same
speed.
He held up a sensor block, panning it round in search of anomalous hot-spots. The image was overlapping his actual field of
view, which meant he was looking straight at the house on the other side of the street when it exploded.
A serjeant had cut through the lock on a side door and crept cautiously inside, machine gun held ready. The ground floor must
have been clear, because a second serjeant followed him in. Thirty seconds later four explosions detonated simultaneously.
They were carefully placed, one at each corner of the house. Long flakes of concrete and lumps of stone shot out of the billowing
flame. The whole house trembled: then, its crucial support destroyed, it collapsed vertically. Windows all along the street
blew out under the impact of the blast wave. Sinon just managed to twist away in time, allowing his backpack to take the brunt
of the flying shards.
The affinity bond boiled with hard, frantic thoughts. Both serjeants in the house were hammered by the explosions, their bodies
wrecked. But the tough exoskeleton withstood the searing pressure for a few moments, long enough for the controlling personalities
to instinctively begin the transfer. One of the orbiting voidhawks accepted their thoughts; then the house descended on their
already weakened skulls.
“Shit!” Sinon yelled. He was curled up on the bedroom floor, aware of something being wrong with his left forearm. When he
brought it up to his face, the exoskeleton was cracked in a small star pattern. Blood was seeping out of the centre. Rain
lashed in through the empty window, washing the crimson stain away.
Are you all right?
Choma asked.
Yes… Yes, I think so. What happened?
He stood up, peering down circumspectly onto the street. The mud and rain had swallowed almost all the immediate signs of
the explosion. There was no smoke, no dust cloud. Just a pancake of rubble where the house had stood moments before. The tide
of mud was already frothing round it, bubbling eagerly into cracks.
Choma pointed his machine gun along the street, radiating satisfaction that the squad had merged with the scenery. He knew
where they were, but they weren’t easily visible.
Where are they? Did anyone see where the white fire came from?
He was answered with a chorus of: No’s.
I don’t think it was white fire,
Sinon said. He ordered his block to replay the memory. The gouts of flame spearing out of each corner were orange, and they
came from inside the house.
Sabotage?
Choma said.
Could be. They were perfectly placed for demolition.
They were on their way down the stairs when the second house exploded. It was on the far side of town, being examined by one
of the other squads. One serjeant was killed, another two were injured beyond any field medic’s ability to patch up; they
needed immediate evacuation. The rest of Sinon’s squad stood back as he clambered up over the mound of stone and girders which
had been the house. When he was clear of the mud he ran a sensor pad over the exposed rubble close to one of the corners.
The rain was washing the mess clean, but the chemical analysis still had enough residual molecules to work with.
Not good,
he announced.
This wasn’t white fire. There’s a definite trace of trinitrotoluene here.
Sod it!
Choma exclaimed.
The bastards have booby trapped the whole town.
Parts of it. I doubt they’ve got the resources to rig every building.
But you can bet they’ve done the critical ones, as well as picking on houses at random,
he said grudgingly.
It’s what I would’ve done.
If you’re right, we’re going to have to treat each building as potentially hazardous. And we don’t even know what the trigger
is.
I doubt it’ll be electronic. Our sensors would spot active processors, and the possessed wouldn’t be able to set them up in
the first place. We’ll have to get some of the marine engineers in here to find out what kind of mechanism they’re employing.
Sinon’s response was lost amid a burst of anguish within the communal affinity band. Both of them instinctively turned to
the west. The death of another two serjeants was all too clear. A warehouse in a town called Holywell had just exploded.
It’s not just here,
Choma said.
Ekelund’s people have been busy.
______
Confirmation that most major towns around the periphery of Mortonridge were booby trapped came in to the Ops Room throughout
the afternoon. Ralph sat in his office assessing the reports in a state of weary disbelief. Progress schematics were being
revised on a fifteen minute basis by the AI. Their original timetable was constantly rearranged, targets being pushed further
and further back.
“Truly amazing,” he told Princess Kirsten during the evening’s briefing. “We’re fifteen hours in, and already twenty behind
schedule.”
“Conditions are pretty foul under there,” Admiral Far-quar said. “I don’t see Ekelund’s people having a better time of it.”
“How would we know? Fifteen hours, and we haven’t had a single encounter with a live possessed. Christ, I mean I know no battle
plan survives contact with the enemy, but no one ever said anything about it disintegrating before we even catch sight of
them.”
“General Hiltch,” the Princess said sharply. “I’d like you to give me some positive factors, please. Have all the possessed
simply vanished into this other realm they long for?”
“We don’t think so, no, ma’am. Pulling back from the coast and the firebreak is a logical move. They obviously worked it out
in advance, hence the booby traps.”
“There’s circumstantial evidence that they’re still in the centre of Mortonridge,” Diana said. “Our satellite sensor scans
are at their worst there. Radar and UV laser is beginning to break through the fringes, but when we try to probe the centre
we get the same kind of hazing effect the possessed have always generated. QED, they’re still there.”
“That’s something, I suppose.”
“I also think the worst of the rain should be over by midday tomorrow. Results from the sensors we can rely on show us the
cloud is thinning out. A lot of it is simply blowing out to sea now they’re no longer containing it. And of course, it’s falling,
bigtime.”
“It certainly is,” Acacia said. She shuddered at the on-the-ground impressions affinity had delivered to her. “You’re going
to have real problems with Mortonridge’s vegetation when this is all over. I doubt there’s a tree standing on the whole peninsula.
I didn’t know rain like that could exist.”