“They’re out over the jungle. We’ll call them back now. Besides, it could be a genuine accident. There might be people hurt
up ahead.”
The lines around Len’s mouth tightened, reflecting his indecision. No true captain would ignore another boat in distress.
A broken chunk of yellow foam packaging scraped down the side of the
Coogan
. “All right,” he said, clutching at the wheel. “But the first sign of trouble, and I’m off downriver. It’s not the money.
Coogan
’s all I’ve got, I built her with my own hands. I ain’t risking the old girl for you.”
“I’m not asking you to. I’m just as anxious as you that nothing happens to the boat, or you. No matter what we find in the
villages, we’ve still got to get back to Durringham. Lori and I are too old to walk.”
Len grunted dismissively, but started feeding the wheel round again, lining the prow up on the eastern horizon.
The affinity call went out, and Abraham and Catlin curved through the clear air, racing for the river. From their vantage
point seven kilometres ahead of the
Coogan
they could see tiny scraps of debris floating slowly in the current. They were also high enough for the water to be almost
completely transparent. Lori could see large schools of brown-spines and reddish eel-analogues swimming idly.
It wasn’t until the sun was a red-gold ball touching the treetops ahead of the little trader boat that the eagles found the
paddle-boats jammed into opposite banks. Lori and Darcy guided them in long spirals above the surrounding jungle, searching
for the colonists and crew and posse. There was nobody on the boats, or in the camps that had been set up.
There’s one,
Lori said. She felt Darcy come into the link with Abraham, looking through the bird’s enhanced eyes. Down below, a figure
was slipping through the jungle. The tightly packed leaves made observation difficult, granting them only the most fleeting
of glimpses. It was a man, a new colonist they judged, because he was wearing a shirt of synthetic fabric. He was walking
unhurriedly westwards, parallel to the river about a kilometre inland.
Where does he think he’s going?
Darcy asked.
There isn’t another village on this side for fifty kilometres.
Do you want to send Abraham down below the tree level for a better look?
No. My guess is this man’s been sequestrated. They all have.
There were nearly seven hundred people on those three boats.
Yes.
And there are close to twenty million people on Lalonde. How much would it cost to sequestrate them all?
A lot, if you used nanonics.
You don’t think it is nanonics?
No; Laton said it was an energy virus. Whatever that is.
And you believe him?
I hate to say it, but I’m giving what he said a great deal of credence right now. There’s certainly something at work here
beyond our normal experience.
Do you want to capture this man? If he is a victim of the virus we should learn all we need to know from him.
I’d hate to try chasing anyone through this jungle, especially a lone man on foot who obviously has colleagues nearby.
We go on to Ozark, then?
Yes.
The
Coogan
advanced up the river at a much slower pace, waiting for the sun to set before passing the two paddle-boats. For the first
time since he arrived on the planet, Darcy actually found himself wishing it would rain. A nice thick squall would provide
extra cover. As it was they had to settle for thin clouds gusting over Diranol, subduing its red lambency to a sourceless
candle-glow which reduced ordinary visibility to a few hundred metres. Even so the trader’s wheezing engines and clanking
gearbox sounded appallingly loud on the night-time river where silence was sacrosanct.
Lori engaged her retinal implants as they crept thieflike between the two boats. Nothing moved, there were no lights. The
two derelicts set up cold resonances in her heart she couldn’t ignore. The ships brooded.
“There should be a small tributary around here,” Darcy said an hour later. “You can moor the
Coogan
in it; that ought to make it invisible from anyone on the Zamjan.”
“How long for?” Len asked.
“Until tomorrow night. That should give us plenty of time, Ozark is only another four kilometres east of here. If we’re not
back by 04:00 hours, then cast off and get home.”
“Right you are. And I ain’t spending a minute more, mind.”
“Make sure you don’t cook anything. The smell will give you away if there’s any trained hunting beasts in the area.”
The little tributary stream was only twice the width of the
Coogan
, with tall cherry oak trees growing on the boggy banks. Len Buchannan backed his boat down it, cursing every centimetre of
the way. Once cables had secured it in the middle of the channel, Len, Lori, and Darcy worked for an hour cutting branches
to camouflage the cabin.
Len’s dark mood became apprehensive when Darcy and Lori were finally set to leave. Both of them had put on their chameleon
suits; matt grey, tight fitting, with a ring of broad equipment pouches around the waist. He couldn’t see an empty one.
“Look out for yourselves,” he mumbled, embarrassed at what he was saying, as they walked down the plank to the jungle.
“Thank you, Len,” Darcy said. “We will. Just make sure you’re here when we get back.” He pulled the hood over his head.
Len raised a hand. The air around the Edenists turned impenetrably black, flowing like oily smoke around their bodies. Then
they were gone. He could hear their feet squelching softly in the mud, slowly fading into the distance. A sudden chill breeze
seemed to rise out of the cloying jungle humidity, and he hastened back into the galley. Those chameleon suits were too much
like magic.
Four kilometres through the jungle in the dead of night.
It wasn’t too bad, their retinal implants had low-light and infrared capability. Their world was a two-tone of green and red,
shot through with strange white sparkles, like interference on a badly tuned holoscreen. Depth perception was the trickiest,
compressing trees and bushes into a flat mantle of landscape.
Twice they came across sayces on a nocturnal prowl. The animals’ hot bodies shone like a dawn star amongst the lacklustre
vegetation. Each time, Darcy killed them with a single shot from his maser carbine.
Lori’s inertial guidance block navigated them towards the village, its bitek processor pumping their coordinates directly
into her brain, giving her the mindless knowledge and accuracy of a migratory bird. All she had to watch out for was the lie
of the land; even the most exhaustive satellite survey couldn’t reveal the folds, rillets, and gullies that hid below the
treetops.
Two hundred metres from the edge of Ozark’s clearing, their green and red world began to grow lighter. Lori checked through
Abraham high overhead, keeping the bird circling outside the clearing. There were a number of fires blazing in open pits outside
the cabins.
Seems pretty normal,
she told Darcy.
From here, yes. Let’s see if we can get in closer and spot any of the sheriffs and their weapons.
OK. One minute, I’ll bring Kelven in. We’ll update him as we go.
In case anything happens and we don’t get back, that way they’ll have some record—but she tried not to think that. She ordered
her communication block to open a channel to the naval ELINT satellite. The unit had a bitek processor, so the conversation
wouldn’t be audible.
We’re at Ozark village now,
she told the navy commander.
Are you all right?
Kelven Solanki asked.
Yes.
What’s your situation?
Right now we’re on our hands and knees about a hundred metres from the fields around the village. There are several fires
burning in the village, and a lot of people moving round for this time of night. There must be three or four hundred of them
outside, can’t be many in the cabins. Apart from that it looks pretty ordinary.
She wormed her way forward through the tangle of long grass and creepers, avoiding the bushes. Darcy was a metre to her left.
It had been a long time since her last fieldcraft training session, she was moderately pleased by how little noise she was
making.
Kelven, I want you to datavise a list of the sheriffs the BK133s landed at Ozark,
Darcy said.
We’ll see if we can identify any of them.
Right away, here they come.
Lori pressed the twigs of a low-hanging branch to the ground, and slithered over them. There was the trunk of a large mayope
four metres ahead, its roots sloping up out of the soil. Light from the fires fluoresced the bark to a lurid topaz.
The list of sheriffs streamed into her mind; facts, figures, and profiles, most importantly the holograms. Mirages of seventy
men shimmered over the vapid low-light image of Ozark. Lori reached the mayope trunk and looked out over the lines of seedy
cabins, trying to match the visual patterns in her mind with what she could see.
There’s one,
Darcy said. His mind indicated one of the men squatting in a circle of people around a fire. Some kind of animal carcass
was roasting above the flames.
And another,
Lori indicated.
They swiftly located a further twelve sheriffs at various fires.
None of them look particularly concerned that their communications with Candace Elford have been cut off,
she said.
Have they been sequestrated?
Kelven Solanki asked.
There’s no way of knowing for sure, but my best guess is yes,
Darcy said.
Given their current situation, their behaviour is abnormal. They should at least have posted a perimeter guard.
The bitek processor in Lori’s back-up communication block reported a power loss in the unit’s electron-matrix crystal. She
automatically ordered the reserve crystal to be brought on line, the thought was virtually subconscious.
I concur,
Lori said.
I think our original primary goal of verifying Laton’s presence is irrelevant in these circumstances.
Seconded. We’ll attempt to seize one of these people and bring them back to Durringham for examination.
The mimetic governor circuitry on Darcy’s chameleon suit indicated a databus glitch in his right leg; alternative channels
were brought on line by the master processor.
Our best bet will be that cabin there, it’s reasonably isolated, and I saw someone go in just now.
Lori evinced a five-room building standing apart from the others. It was a hundred and twenty metres from the edge of the
jungle, but the intervening ground was mostly allotments, providing as much cover as the trees. She took an image enhancer
out of a pouch on her waist, and brought it up to her eyes.
Bloody thing’s broken. Try yours, we need to know how many are inside.
Darcy’s chemical/biological agent detector shut down.
It hasn’t broken,
he said in consternation.
We’re in some kind of electronic warfare field!
Damn it!
Lori’s back-up communicator and target-laser-acquisition warning sensors dropped out.
Kelven, did you hear that? They’re using highly sophisticated electronic warfare systems.
Your signal strength is fading,
Kelven said.
Darcy felt his affinity link with his maser carbine’s controlling processor vanish. When he looked at the gun its LCD display
panel was dead.
Come on, move it! Back to the
Coogan
.
Darcy!
He twisted round to see five people standing in a semicircle right-behind them. One woman, four men. All of them with strange
placid smiles; dressed like settlers in denim trousers and cotton shirts, the men with thick beards. Even with shock paralysing
his nerves he retained enough presence of mind to glance at his own arm. Infrared showed him a faint pink outline, but low-light
simply revealed long blades of grass. The chameleon circuitry was still functional.
“Shit!”
Kelven, they can see chameleon suits. Warn your people. Kelven?
The hardware units he wore round his waist were all failing in rapid succession, affinity filling his mind with processor
caution warnings. They started to wink out. There was no reply from Kelven Solanki.
“You must be the pair Laton called,” one of the men said. He looked from Lori to Darcy. “You can get up now.”
The power supply to Lori’s chameleon suit ebbed to nothing, and the fabric reverted to its natural dull grey. She rolled to
one side and stood in one smooth motion. Implant glands were feeding a gutsy brew of hormones into her blood supply, hyping
her muscles. She dropped both her maser carbine and the image enhancer, freeing her hands. Five wouldn’t be a problem. “Where
do you come from?” she asked. “I’m talking to you that’s in charge of them. Is your origin in your memory?”
“You’re an atheist,” the woman replied. “It would be kinder to spare you the answer.”
Take them out,
Darcy said.
Lori stepped forwards, turning, arms and legs moving fast. Left ankle swinging into the man’s kneecap with her full bodyweight
behind it—satisfying crackle of breaking bone; right hand chopping the woman’s larynx, slamming her Adam’s apple into her
vertebrae. Darcy was wreaking similar mayhem on his targets. Lori spun round on one foot, left leg kicking out again, back
arching supplely, and her boot’s toecap caught a man just below and behind his ear, splitting his skull.