‘You have to ask the boss,’ chuckled Fenny. ‘I don’t even know myself—yet.’
Jam leapt aboard the Chinook, and the suspension lurched under his weight. The group’s members exchanged glances as Jam moved forward and Sonia J sidestepped to give him room. Jam smiled down at her—a disconcerting predatory look on a misshapen armoured face which was wide, flat and almost triangular. Sonia J forced a smile in return, then moved to a corner of the Chinook’s cargo bay where benches lined the riveted and badly painted wall. Canvass harnesses were attached to the frame and Sonia strapped herself in tightly.
‘Where we going, Big Guy?’ Fenny tilted his head, staring up into Jam’s copper eyes with a smile.
You are one of the few, thought Jam, sighing deeply. One of the few who still treat me the same; one of the few who remember me from before—before the torture at the hands of Mace. Before the transformation into ScorpNex. One of the few who still look at me without the veil of prejudice.
‘Norway,’ said Jam. ‘And I thought I told you to get those fucking curls shaved.’
‘I’ll do a deal, JamNex. You shave my curls, I’ll wax your insect armour. How does that sound? Does it tickle you in the right place, my old and chitinous friend?’
‘You make me feel wanted again,’ rumbled Jam with an alien smile.
The weather over the sea as the Chinook crossed the Prime Meridian consisted of freezing ice rain which had lasted without respite for the previous 500 kilometres. Winds howled and buffeted the transport aircraft as Fenny fought the storm with a grim, weary look on his normally pampered face. Bags marred the usually smooth skin around his eyes, ruining the effects of his Oil of Olay, and he continually cursed his lack of sleep. On board, every member of the group felt sick due to the incessant pounding of the storm and the constant pitching and yawing of the Chinook. They all had the feeling that at any moment they would be plucked from the raging heavens and tossed screaming into the sea.
Sonia had her knees up under her chin and her arms wrapped around her legs. For a while she had listened to the banter of the soldiers, but soon it grew wearisome—there are only so many jokes about ‘fannies’ and ‘sheep VD’ that a girl can listen to—and she closed her eyes, trying to link the rhythm of her body to the undulating pendulum swings of the helicopter. I am a fish out of water, she thought. A simple TV presenter who’s out of her fucking depth.
Jam settled himself next to her, and even with her eyes closed Sonia could feel his presence. The oiled smell of his ScorpNex chitin. The way the alloy bench groaned under his weight. Sonia smiled then, and opened her eyes. ‘How are you?’ Jam asked her.
Sonia shivered. ‘Well, cold. A bit at sea. I’m not a soldier Jam—I never was.’
‘But you are vital to the success of this mission. You know the HIVE systems better than anybody here. And we are desperately short of programmers. They are the first people the Nex exterminated; they remember too clearly how Spiral relies on its technology.’
‘But what happens if my codes don’t gain us access? What if I can’t find out what we need to know?’
‘I will help you,’ said Jam softly. ‘Together, we will infiltrate their systems. Trust me—I have every faith in our combined abilities. Remember when you joined the REBS? You were sick of the killings? Sick of Nex rule? You wanted to make a difference? Well now you can. In a small way. Maybe even in a
huge
way. Who knows what secret talents you hold? We all have our part to play, Sonia, we all have our roles in life—and they change. They are not always clear—even when sunlight is shining through the crystal ball.’
Jam seemed to sleep then, his copper eyes closing, and Sonia’s mind drifted back; to her TV productions, to thoughts of her colleagues, to the farce of the trial and her certainty that she would die under the hail of bullets fired by the execution squad.
The Chinook hammered across the Norwegian Sea and flew parallel with the coast, which was shrouded in heavy mist, for many kilometres. When it reached the edge of the Arctic Circle it banked steeply, thundering inland. The weather had cleared somewhat as they pounded low over the coastal waterways with sheer hills rearing up from the sea to either side. These waterways led inland, past Angersnes, Fagervika and Bardal, and Fenny shaved their speed as they approached the disused nuclear power plant at Hemnesberget. Here, he banked once more, heading south to touch down a couple of kilometres from their intended target.
‘Any signs of electronic scanning?’ asked Jam, as the Chinook’s howling engines powered down, whining slowly to a stop.
‘No. Nothing. But that doesn’t mean we weren’t picked up by advanced scanners. To tell the truth, Jam, this crate is a bag of shit, and I’d rather fly an old B52. With no wings.’
‘You did well, Fenny, getting us this far.’
The group jumped free into the LZ, a small clearing surrounded by towering Norwegian spruce which offered excellent cover and camouflage for the Chinook. The stretch of forest would also provide cover from the air on much of the short journey to the Hemnesberget Power Plant. The soldiers, alert now that they were on the ground and, indeed, in enemy territory, checked weapons and set up a defensive perimeter of sub-machine guns.
Fenny would stay with the aircraft, to carry out checks and to be available to pull the group out if the mission suddenly went pear-shaped. For Sonia, especially, this was a more than sobering thought.
Once ready, the group moved away from the clearing, over a forest floor strewn with patches of frozen snow. Under the rich-scented boughs they trudged, Jam and Oz in the lead, followed by Sonia and then the rest of the group. It offended her pride that they wanted her at the centre—as if she needed protection. But Sonia had to concede that she definitely was not a battle-hardened veteran. And so she kept her mouth shut and her eyes on the horizon. The soldiers were only doing their jobs.
They moved forward for a kilometre in silence. Then Jam and Oz slowed their speed as they approached a ridge which fell away down a concave slope that looked like a giant scoop, more sparsely scattered with vegetation and showing several huge drifts of snow which had gathered in hollows.
The group paused for a while, strung out under the cover of trees, gazing down at the power plant near the coast. It was a huge, staggered building—a main concrete block four storeys high, the walls covered with galvanised panels and painted dark green. The view was dominated by the huge white cooling dome of the reactor.
Oz and Baze both had digital binoculars, and the tiny clicks and whirrs that they had made signified a careful set of observations. ‘Anything?’ asked Jam.
‘Two guards, standard Nex,’ said Oz softly. Then he placed the binos down on the pine-cone-scattered ground and started to fit the long digital sight to his huge SSG550.
‘Two,’ confirmed the huge figure of Baze. He scratched at his bushy black beard. ‘Seems about ten too few, if you ask me. If this
is
the K-Labs, then shouldn’t they have more protection? You’d expect a damned battalion to be camped out there.’
‘Possibly,’ said Jam. He scanned along the lines of smaller buildings which were set back from the main concrete complex. ‘The K-Labs are highly specialised, very well hidden, and have practically finished their research tree. Their job is done. A large group of guards would only draw attention to such a place. The labs’ main defence is the covert nature of the base.’
‘How did you find out about the K-Labs?’ asked Baze.
Jam shrugged his armoured shoulders. ‘I used to work with Durell. I knew many of his secrets. The fucker thinks I am dead—buried under a billion tonnes of Austrian mountain. What has he to fear from discovery? He rules the world and HATE rules much of the wild land between towns and cities ... or so Durell would have us—and the herded populations—believe. Amazing, the power of the media, isn’t it?’ He threw a sideways glance at Sonia, who nodded.
‘Something’s happening down there,’ said Baze softly.
The group returned to their surveillance. One of the smaller buildings had ten trucks parked outside, huge battered military FukTruks used for the transportation of infantry, ammunition, supplies—even a couple of tanks could be carried on the back under the heavy flapping tarpaulins. Engines started up, spurting clouds of black diesel smoke. With tyres crunching frozen earth, the vehicles turned in wide circles and rolled away down a bumpy track, disappearing between two small hills where they were swallowed by the forest.
‘What do you think they’re transporting?’ asked Oz.
‘Let’s hope it’s not barrels of EDEN. What’s the point of destroying this installation if there’s nothing here? I think it’s time we made a move. Oz, you confident?’
Oz settled himself against the ground and sighted through his scopes. He said, ‘Yes, Jam. I am always confident.’ A shot rang out and a bullet took the first Nex guard between the eyes, flipping it backwards where it smashed against the wall and folded down into a sprawled heap.
A second shot rang out, but the other Nex had already turned and was sprinting for cover. The round took it high in the shoulder, spinning it, momentarily stunned, to the ground. The Nex, bleeding, started to crawl towards a doorway—beyond which it could set off alarms.
‘Oz?’ asked Jam coolly.
‘I’m on it,’ said Oz. The third bullet caved in the top of the Nex’s head, and it dropped lifeless to the ground. It twitched for a while, body jiggling as if an electric charge was passing through its dead limbs. Then it finally lay still.
‘There is no dignity in death,’ came the soulful voice of Rekalavich.
‘There’s little dignity in life, either, my friend,’ replied Jam. ‘Come on, let’s move out. We have a job to do.’
Using trees for cover, they made their way down the hillside. Oz and Haggis used their ECubes to scan for sensors, heat, vid, audio. Jam could no longer use his own ECube. It did not recognise him as human.
The group hunkered down a hundred metres from the towering walls of the old nuclear power plant. No longer did a core burn at the reactor’s heart. But the Nex had to have been guarding
something.
And instinct told Jam that his team was in the right place. The K-Labs, one of the crucial research and development centres for this new biological weapon—maybe even a
production
centre for the toxic shit, for EDEN ... well, it was in there.
He could feel it. In his bones. In his newly created Nex soul...
Jam’s teeth ground hard deep within his chitinous armoured head. His copper eyes glowed. And pain started to gnaw at the centre of his brain, the agony growing, until his vision blurred and he lowered his head in submission ...
let us ()
out
make () us free
we see you () see you
you traitor () to our kind
traitor we see your acts () betrayer
we see you rot () we see you burn () you not control us () we live here ()
here in your soul in your mind in your heart and you can never be free
we see your () pain ()
we see your () weakness ()
weakness
Jam frowned, buzzing sounds and pain spinning inside his skull. And then they were gone.
Shivering, Jam turned, breathing deeply, filled with confusion. Then, with a single movement of his clawed hand, he gave the signal to advance and the team moved slowly across the final few metres of barren land ...
killing ground ...
and towards the narrow door.
The door swung open. There were no guards, no automated alarm or defence systems. Jam, with Oz close behind, moved into a narrow corridor and the group shuffled forward, bristling with automatic weaponry, and halted, covering each other’s arcs of fire.
Oz stared down at his ECube, then shook his head ‘It’s been blanked. I think the building is made out of some kind of material which interfered with ECube scans; pretty handy for an old nuclear plant, eh, Jam?’
‘Yes. Far too convenient.’ They moved forward, the clattering of Jam’s claws against concrete the only sound in the cold corridor. They moved into another, wider corridor which was painted a dull yellow and had a grey floor. The walls were covered with piping, tubes, wiring and corrugated sections of steel. Oz ran his ECube across one of the cables.
‘DigiOptic. No need for that in a power plant.’
‘I have a gut feeling we are in the right place,’ said Baze.
‘Then why is it so deserted?’ asked Sonia. To her own ears her voice seemed small; she felt tiny in this place, insignificant amongst these soldiers.
‘I have a bad feeling that we’re too late,’ said Oz softly. He rubbed at his bushy eyebrows, and hoisted his submachine gun thoughtfully. ‘Those FukTruks? Maybe they’re taking the last dregs of EDEN away to safer quarters. You’d think this place would be riddled with Nex. I thought we were going to have to fight our way in.’
‘It’s definitely been too easy so far,’ conceded Jam. ‘Come on. Let’s find the labs. There will be answers to our questions there.’ He set off, the rest of the team close behind him.
And in my experience, he thought sourly, easy is always a bad thing.
The interior of the Hemnesberget power plant was a muddle of cables and piping. Many cables trailed haphazardly across the floor—which had changed from dull grey concrete to black, shining vinyl. But somehow the place seemed too neat, too clinical.