There'd already been several short skirmishes on the floors below. Any possible element of surprise was now well and truly spent. The Awoken terrorists, holed up in their cell house on this floor now knew just what they were up against.
He stepped over the ragged remains of one of them onto the landing of floor 19. Ahead of him was a long passageway. This floor's main lateral passage; twelve feet wide and a hundred yards long, cube doors on either side of it all the way down.
His men were already in position, crouched in open rounded doorways on both sides. The floor was spattered with blood and bodies lay crumpled in several places. Hollander noted with relief that none of them were his own men. He hugged the left side wall and made his way down the passage, darting from doorway to doorway, glimpsing, as he did, the cube interiors; depressing, dark, squalid spaces containing the broken remains of left-behind furniture and gutted wiring of appliances. In one cube, a toob with a faulty colour balance silently flickered a frozen purple cartoon image in mid air. In another an overturned soft red lamp highlighted dark liquid spattered across a grimy floor. The muted glow from floating neon billboards outside spilled through the small, porthole windows of the cubes lining the passageway; shadow and light playing across the trash covered floor in a varying, flickering rainbow of colour.
Finally, halfway down the main passageway he found the company's 1st Sergeant-of-Arms. He knelt down beside him in the doorway. 'Update me, sergeant.'
'Heat signatures indicate they're holding up in a bunch of rooms right down there at the end, sir. That's their cell house.'
Hollander looked around. The walls were covered with faded gang-tag graffiti. Obscene language, cartoonish and childlike scrawls of human-alien sex acts. Over the top of some of them, like a fresher layer of geology, were pasted sheets of Rebornist scripture. Slogans, prayers, phrases in bold yellow lettering…
The last prophet wipes away ALL that is WRONG.
Gods JUDGEMENT is Near.
Be vigilant, Be patient. Be PURE.
'Looks like these floors were occupied by gangers and dopeheads first,' added the sergeant.
Hollander nodded. Then the terrorists moved in and cleared them out. If there was one, solitary, worthwhile thing that could be said about the Awoken it was that they had a zero tolerance for drugs and alcohol. Intel reports emphasised the fact that they recruited their foot soldiers from places like this, the weak, the damaged and broken; addicts looking for one last chance of salvation. Hollander glanced at a poster stuck to the wall above the sergeant's head. An image displaying their faith's long overdue final prophet; a human silhouette that could easily have been male or female; arms and legs spread-eagled like that Old Earth painting by the famous medieval artist…Davinzy or something? Beneath the image - The Arrival is Here And Now. Are you READY?
The last members of the cell were up ahead. Hollander could hear the faint sound of one of their martyrdom hymns playing softly; a solo mournful male voice warbling lines from their scripture. It echoed down the dim flickering passageway towards them.
'Those mad bastards aren't going to surrender, sir.'
'Of course they're not,' replied Hollander. 'We're giving them exactly what they want…martyrdom.'
'We should just hit them with a decomp charge.'
A decompression charge; a canister of highly flammable liquid that discharged as a fine aerosol, then ignited. The explosion of flame had the affect of instantly consuming all the available oxygen within the blast perimeter. It created an instant and very powerful localised vacuum that pulled the linings of the lung right up the throat and out the mouths of those in the immediate area. Further away, it caused other extreme decompression deaths such as eye proptosis, collapsed lungs and ruptured throat linings. But most often it killed by asphyxiation. The perfect clean out weapon for room-by-room combat. The flash flame would also incinerate any flammable evidence materials. That weirdly dressed 'supervisor' sent by The Administration, Deacon, insisted he wanted this cell house completely intact. Evidence materials, that was the phrase he kept stressing. Evidence Materials. That's what he wanted to get his hands on.
'This isn't a cleanse-n-burn, sergeant. We need to take the cell house in one piece. Survivors where possible. It's a room-by-room.'
The man nodded. 'Understood, sir.'
Hollander touched his throat mic to address the rest of the platoon squatting in the open door ways all the way down the length of the passageway. 'We need to take this cell house. The Powers That Be also want at least a couple of breathers by the time we've finished here. So body shots where possible, gentleman. Understood?'
Heads nodded silently.
'Right,' he said to the sergeant. 'Let's do the best we can.'
The far end of the passageway was dark. The ceiling lights shot out, the cube doors on either side were closed, blocking the faint multicoloured light from the city outside. It was pitch black. Hollander noted the faint melodic sound of the martyr's hymn had ceased.
They're ready for the end.
He was about to give the sergeant the go-ahead, when one of his men called out. 'Movement!'
He flipped down the heat-vision hud over his right eye. The grainy purple image was low resolution and unclear. He could just about make out something large and bulky shuffling up the passage towards them, it's colour was slightly warmed from heat signatures beyond it. It took him a couple of seconds to work out what he was looking at; a piece of furniture, a gel couch or a mattress. They were using it as a heat shield to disguise their approach in the dark.
Now they knew their cover was blown, he heard their voices behind it, raised and crying out a last plea to their God.
Fregg. Hollander shook his head. What is it with these people?
His sergeant bellowed the order to open fire and the dark passageway suddenly came alive, ignited by the strobed light of muzzle flashes; a zoetrope sequence of grisly frozen images as the gel couch disintegrated under the impact of several dozen high calibre rounds. It wobbled like some giant Bhudda's belly, gouts of green plastic gel erupting from large ragged star shaped exit holes. The gel couch quickly torn to pieces, fell in wobbling plastic chunks to the floor.
Then, it was the turn of the young men beyond to be eviscerated in much the same way.
CHAPTER 27
Deacon picked his way carefully past the bodies that had been dragged to one side of the passageway. If he bothered to count up the dismembered parts, he reckoned he'd find about seven or eight bodies lying there. The ridiculously high calibre rounds these marines insisted on carrying with them always left such a damned bloody mess behind.
However, all credit to them, they had taken the cell house without completely obliterating it or the entire tower block for that matter. More to the point, they'd managed to capture one of the Awoken terrorists alive. Deacon was assured his wounds weren't fatal and he was currently being treated.
The passageway was still smokey with the acrid smelling propellant gas from their pulse rifles. The hastily erected floodlight set on a tripod shone a thick bluish beam through it, down the length of the dark passage.
He found the First Company captain waiting for him at the entrance. He snapped to attention and offered Deacon a crisp salute.
Deacon casually waved the gesture away as unnecessary. 'Hollander, I want to walk through this cell house alone. I don't want it contaminated by clumsy army boots. All right? Nobody else comes in until I say so.'
'Understood, sir.'
He stepped through the round doorway, ducking as he entered the floor-end 'penthouse' cube that the terrorists had been so fiercely defending. It was larger than the other cubes, of course. Two bedpods off the main room, a washroom cubicle big enough for a small tub and a kitchen big enough to have a pull-out table in it. The main room's window was a large panoramic oval that looked out directly upon another mirror image apartment tower block. Deacon approached the window, pulled the slatted blind up and gazed out at the multicoloured neon glare of th
e city; at the hundreds of glowing round windows opposite, at the garish flickering billboards that encrusted the tower. He leant forward until his forehead touched the perspex and looked down at the street levels below. He could see the winking of blue law marshal lights, the surrounding pedestrian ways blockaded to keep the nosey riff-riff back and out of harm's way.
Ambient light flooded in now the blind was up. Not bright enough to examine this place forensically though. He pulled out a flashlight, snapped it on and swung the harsh beam around. This main space looked like it had been used by the cell as a prayer room. There were cushions on the floor in rows and copies of the Rebornist holy book scattered amongst them. The walls were pasted with more of the various posters and pages torn from their books. Here and there was the symbol of their last prophet, the very symbol of their faith - the spread-eagled androgynous figure.
So far, not so very different to other captured cell houses he'd witnessed. He stuck his head into one of the bedpods and panned his torch around quickly. This one he guessed was probably used by the cell's 'teacher'; presumably he was one of the corpses lying out there in the passage. A modest and sparse interior. Just a bed. A lamp. Some clothes folded tidily on a shelf and a small plastic figurine of the arms-and-legs-spread prophet on a bedside unit.
He stepped back across the prayer cushions of the main room, pushed the door in on the other bedpod and stuck his head and flashlight inside.
He gasped.
'Good God,' he whispered.
The walls of the small space were filled with hundreds of photographs of babies, toddlers, children, teenagers. It took him a few moments to realise that they were in fact all pictures of the same individual. A person growing up, a person photographed, observed at every stage of childhood.
Ellie Quin.
Some images seemed to have been taken close up, presumably by family or friends, but many others seemed to have been taken from a remote camera; taken from a distance and magnified. He shone his torch at an image of Ellie as a child of eleven, maybe twelve. She was at some kind of dusty rural market or fair, gazing wide-eyed at a market stall selling cheap plastic trinkets, clearly unaware that she was being observed. Beside it, another of her, this time aged four or five….playing on some sort of net hammock with another younger child and grinning up at the person taking the photo.
Deacon stepped into the bed pod and closed the door behind him. The pictures were all the way around, on the back of the door too. And there were notebooks and data tablets with her name handwritten on the spines. Copious volumes of information about the girl, observations about her behaviour from the cradle right up until, he guessed, very recently.
They've been watching her for twenty years!
He picked up a data tablet, switched it on and looked at a screen full of writing. Garbled thoughts spilled hastily onto a page. A very recent entry.
…She is everything I expected and hoped. Fiercely intelligent. So preceptive. And yet she is also so very sheltered and naive. I do worry for her. I'm worried she's still not quite ready to fulfil the role the Rebornists have for her. Despite my concerns, these others have their faith that God will keep Ellie, the Last Prophet, completely safe from harm. I envy their blind faith and certainty in a God who actually gives a damn…what they don't understand, as I do, is she is just a girl. There is no God looking after her….
CHAPTER 28
'Hey, Hufty, so would you believe it, I'm going to be…a General! Yay! In command of my very own army of evil teddy bear soldiers! (That's not something a person gets to say very often, right?)
'I saw Jez last night and asked her what army she's come up with, but she just winked at me and said she's designed something pretty wicked. Knowing her she's come up with an army of crazy beanies or something equally stupid.
'So, apparently, there's a bit of a delay, it's going to be several more days before we get to play our big war game. Jez's army needs to use some special growth chambers or something and she said she wanted to make some final tweaks. I hope she's not cheating. Shelby will throw a complete loopie if he finds out she and Gray are cheating. He's taking this so-o-o seriously!
'By the way, Shelby and Gray have selected the world 'template' and are now organising how its going to be built…sorry, I believe the correct term is 'fabricated'.
Ellie paused her voice dairy and looked out across the sun-drenched piazza at the pair of jimps tending the gardens. At candybliss bulbs rustling and swaying in the light artificial breeze. A vision of perfection. A vision of Heaven even; albeit a man-made one.
'Fabricated,' she whispered.
She wondered if it was possible to stay in one place all of your natural life and not lose your mind. She'd met those children at the Oxxon refinery, they were never going to see anything more than that tired old creaking structure. Those girls had seemed okay, hadn't they?
But here? In this incredible do-it-yourself paradise?
Although it was beautiful here; although a person could build whatever heavenly environment they could imagine and populate it with creatures and even people (well, caricatures of people) they could hold an intelligent conversation with, none of it was for real.
It was all fabricated.
She wondered if knowing that simple fact made a difference eventually. Sent you insane. Not for the first time she wondered about Shelby and Gray. Both of them had been friendly and welcoming enough, but how long had they been here? Living in absolute solitude, away from each other in their own artificial bubbles, both playing God?
Gray worried her just a little; that world of his that she'd glimpsed…?
He's not right in the head. Surely.
And Shelby? He didn't worry her as such. He was just…peculiar. But…?
But…here she and Jez were. Two girls marooned with two very strange men in a very strange place. More than that…one little thing kept puzzling her, worrying her. Kept whispering to her.
What happened to the others? What really happened? Something about the way Shelby kept brushing away the subject aside was troubling her.
Absently she un-paused her diary.
'Since the others all seem to have something to be getting on with except me. Maybe I'll go exploring…'
*
The elevator door opened with a soft purr and Ellie found herself looking out onto the gloomy mezzanine deck. Why she'd chosen this one, she wasn't entirely sure. Perhaps because since they'd first arrived weeks ago, she'd not been back to this particular deck. Yes, she'd visited the fabrication deck below several times and Shelby had given her a brief tour of the power reactor down on the bottom deck. But, she'd noticed every time the elevator had passed this deck, his face had given an little involuntary tick. She'd asked him why once…he'd replied, flippantly, that it was haunted.
Obviously that was his idea of a joke. But he hadn't elaborated on that. Just a throwaway remark, designed to hopefully to throw her off the scent?
So that was why she was here. Curiosity.
She stepped out into the corridor, her feet clanking noisily on the unwelcoming metal grid floor. She looked around at the dark, grimy bulkhead walls, lined with power conduits and drooping loops of tag-tied cables.
‘Haunted, huh?' Her voice echoed softly up and down the deck. To her right, was the way to the airlock and the shuttle hanger. Frasier had led her and Jez down this way to this elevator.
The other way then.
She took a few uncertain steps along the passage, already wondering whether this was a particularly good idea.
Seriously. Why am I doing this?
Why? Because, despite the hospitality and welcome they'd been offered…she had this unshakable feeling that she and Jez were being misled. Lied to somehow.
It was a whole load of little things, each on their own an inconsequential nothing, but added together…enough to give her this uneasy feeling. The very last thing she'd picked up on was Shelby's contradictory story about how the others had died. First time of telling it
, it had been that a sky panel had failed, there had been a decompression and they'd been sucked out into the black. The second time, he'd said it was not a particularly pleasant or quick way to die.
Decompression and ejection into space? Thirty seconds? A minute at the most? Not quick?
Contradictory stories. That was what she was getting. Only one reason for that.
He's lying about what happened.
She made her way slowly down the passageway not entirely sure what she was looking for, or why the mezzanine deck was the place to be looking for it.
She passed several bulkhead doors with 'storage' stencilled on them. Looking inside one of them she saw endless pallets of boxes. She opened up one marked 'guesthouse: soft furnishings'. And found exactly that. Pillows, sheets, cushions. The homely touches that had yet to be - and never would be - taken up and installed in the guest villas. She looked in several other boxes and discovered supplies of exclusive out-of-system luxuries; cosmetics and toiletries intended for guests that would never arrive. Maybe Shelby's contradictory account was just him simplifying a rather more complicated and technical explanation that he figured, her being a mere girl, she probably wouldn't have a hope of understanding? Sneezing on dust and starting to feel just a little bit paranoid, she was at the point of deciding this was probably a futile exercise and most likely driven more by boredom and an overactive imagination than any real need to be suspicious, when she found herself facing an unmarked bulkhead door.
Unmarked. Unlike any of the others so far.
She grasped the latch bar and tried the door. Like the others, it was unlocked and wheezed open on pneumatic hinges. She poked her head inside. Soft, crimson coloured safety lights blinked on. Unlike the other storage compartments it was mostly empty.
Empty, except for a solitary storage crate right in the middle of the floor. She could see that a dark towel, or cape, or something, was draped over the top of it. She stepped over the lip of the bulkhead door and crossed the floor towards it.