Deacon had a strong feeling about this particular one though. The girl, Ellie Quin, had come from strong genetic stock. Studying the notes on the Quin Paternity Request, both parents had robust genetic profiles, with little or no evidence of regression or chaotic mutation, something of an increasing rarity in itself these days. Putting himself in Dr Mason’s shoes, Deacon would be looking for a well matched and healthy pair of gene sets like those of the parents, Jacob and Maria Quin. Their child would need to be healthy and fit, and unimpaired by any kind of physical frailty. They were good starting stock for Mason to work from.
Deacon had hoped to find her quickly enough in the city. Her ID card, and transactions used against that ID, had helped him narrow down the area in which she was living. It was only when she had set up a merchant’s bank account, in the last few days and used the address of a tenement tower in the Service Sector, that they’d been able to instantly zero in on her.
But the clever girl had already fled by the time they got there.
They had found the habi-cube empty. Deacon and his team had trawled through the things that had been left behind; some clothes, some very cheap furniture, and a sink full of food-encrusted washing up. He guessed from the detritus lying around that the Quin girl had been sharing with another female. Whether they had both left and gone their separate ways or gone together, he didn’t know.
He wondered whether this child had been smart enough to realize she was already being hunted and had consequently fled. Or perhaps someone had informed her that the Administration’s bloodhounds were closing in on her? But he couldn’t think who.
Maybe Mason hadn’t acted alone?
The thought was a concern. It wasn’t beyond the realm of possibility that Mason had prepared the way for his child, had agents of his own out in the field watching over it, to ensure its safety.
Or maybe you’re just jumping at shadows.
Deacon smiled and nodded his head. He was jumping unnecessarily. The Quin girl most probably simply run out of money and been forcibly evicted. It was just bad luck on his part that they had arrived a few days too late to catch her then and there.
He censured himself for thinking that Mason had his own army of like-minded agents out there. The man had been a lone crackpot. All the evidence so far had pointed to the fact that he had been working in isolation. And as far as he knew this Ellie Quin was alone, and more than likely unaware that there was anything special about her.
After finding her empty cube in the city, Deacon had consulted the immigration data file on Quin and noted there was a family address; a remote farm located on plot 451.
And where would an evicted girl with no money head? Home, of course.
The pilot broke the protracted silence in the cabin and Deacon’s meditation.
‘Sir?’
‘What is it?’
‘We’re approaching the destination now, sir,’ the pilot replied, pointing towards what looked like a shallow hill ahead of them, ‘just beyond that spur.’
Deacon nodded and turned round to face his team. They were alert now. The mercenaries who’d been cat-napping were wide awake and Leonard, off wherever that mind of his took him, was back with them now.
‘Alright we’re here. It’s a small domed farm. There are four other inhabitants including our target. Same drill as the last one….I want to be sure our target is there before we eliminate any of them. If the target is not, then we’ll need someone alive to tell us where it might be, understand? So no-one fires until I say so.’
The mercenaries nodded in silence.
As the shuttle passed over the low spur, he saw the cluster of enviro-domes below; a humble, isolated smallholding. With one glance at the dust-covered plastic domes and the clutter of recycled machinery spare parts outside, Deacon already knew what the people inside were going to be like; good, hardy, colonial folk.
Pity.
‘Alright, let’s get this over with,’ he barked over the whine of the engines.
CHAPTER 12
Ellie watched the shimmering sun drifting almost perceptibly downwards towards the flat horizon resting, it seemed, on an undulating bed of flaming oil. The shadows around the abandoned weather station lengthened and darkened as the evening drew in.
It seemed like nothing had changed since she had last been here two years ago. The same wind-worn forms of various cabins and modules, that represented one of this world’s first communities two centuries ago, remained untouched and unvisited.
They were standing in the middle of the colony’s greenhouse, a pyramidal structure of reinforced plastic panels that had been scoured by two centuries of airborne sand to a state of foggy, semi-opacity. Part of the structure had collapsed in the distant past. One of the sides of the pyramid had dropped down inside, leaving the other three sides still standing.
Ellie was fascinated by the shriveled, almost fossilized remains of the crops that had once upon a time grown here. Still standing in a line, she saw a row of support rods that held up the withered and long dead remains of a vine of some sort. Littering the ground, almost as if they had been discarded yesterday, were the tools of agriculture: a trowel, a bucket, some shears…the signs of a hard-fought life endured by those earliest of arrivals here on Harpers Reach.
Jez looked around. ‘It’s just like a museum.’
‘Amazing isn’t it? I guess it’s exactly as it was the day the people who once lived here abandoned it.’
‘You reckon that’s what happened? They just upped and left all of a sudden?’
‘Who knows? We’ve never found any skellys here. They just vanished.’
‘Kinda spooky, huh?’ replied Jez with a shudder.
Ellie noticed the gesture and laughed. ‘You’re not nervous are you?’
‘No, of course not!’
A light gust of wind coursed through the greenhouse and towards an open hatch. It led back into the dark and grimy maze of the colony structure they had a few moments earlier emerged from. A gentle moan and the rattle of something loose deep inside disturbed the silence.
‘It’s just the wind,’ Ellie said noticing Jez looking uncomfortably towards the entrance.
‘Look, we can take the cat back home if you want. I can find my way in the dark.’
Jez frowned. ‘No way! I’m not scared. Anyway,’ she looked at the jimp sitting patiently at Ellie’s feet, ‘we’ve got Harvey to look after us.’
Ellie smiled through her mask. ‘I love it here. I don’t know why…I mean, it should be such a sad place. It’s a community that failed somehow. I’d love to know what happened to the people here. Maybe they died, maybe they moved on. But, the thing is, they tried to build something with their own hands.’
Jez nodded, not really listening. She looked around. ‘So we’re going to camp out here?’
Ellie shrugged. ‘If you think you’re up for it, it’s as good as anywhere. We can erect the oxygen tent in the middle of the greenhouse,’ she said pulling her mask away from her face. She sampled the air. It wasn’t rich enough to breathe for more than a minute or two without a supply of O2 to resort to. After half a dozen breaths, she started to feel light-headed and pulled the mask back down again over her mouth and nose.
The light was beginning to wane quickly as the bottom of the sun merged like molten liquid with the horizon.
‘I should get the oxygen tent up whilst we still have some light,’ said Ellie.
‘I’m hungry. I’ll go and get our supper,’ said Jez.
Maria had made them some vegetable curry to take with them in a couple of thermos flasks, and a parcel of freshly baked bread to mop it up.
‘Would it be quicker if I walked round the outside? Or go back through this spooky place?’ asked Jez.
Ellie looked up and could see Jez was nodding reluctantly towards the open hatchway that led into the structure’s gloomy interior. They had ambled their way through during the afternoon, casually exploring the dimly lit maze of carbon-fiber and metal corridors th
at linked one habitation module with the next. It had been lighter then of course, the sunlight streaming in through the many small windows and fractures in the walls and ceilings, casting dazzling shards of light diagonally across the murky confines around them, and lighting the dusty, grated floor in isolated pools. They had stopped frequently to bend down, pick up and study the faded, dust-coated signs of life scattered almost randomly across the various modules: combs, boots, cutlery, tools, ceramic-mugs…even a small plastic action figure - a solitary toy soldier patiently guarding this long abandoned outpost. These finds were everywhere, the debris, the left-behinds from two centuries ago, and as Jez and Ellie examined each one, the old place seemed to slowly come to life.
They had been wandering around for over two hours, meandering from one side of the colony to the other. Ellie guessed that the larger oxygen cylinders they had taken with them, were now about half empty. It would probably be a good idea if Jez made her way back through the structure to the cat and drove it around and parked outside the greenhouse. Then, it would be near to hand when they needed to replace the oxygen cylinders.
‘It’s much quicker going through…that is if you’re okay going back on your own?’
Jez huffed indignantly, ‘I’m not scared, if that’s what you’re suggesting. You want me to drive the cat round and park outside?’
‘Yes, that’s what I was thinking.’ Ellie handed her a torch. ‘Here, it’s getting dark inside.’
Jez took the torch, flicked it on and panned it across at the dark void beyond the open hatchway. ‘Okay then,’ she muttered, licking her dry lips. ‘Off I go.’
She stepped across the dry and crumbly ground. As she approached the entrance, she aimed the torch beam into the dark opening ahead of her and stepped inside. The sharp beam of torchlight picked out details on the corridor wall she hadn’t noticed earlier in the afternoon as they had casually picked their way towards the greenhouse. Beside her she saw stenciled writing, faded by centuries of dry wind erosion; connection conduit – locking this end only, exterior bulkhead, module section-NA156. Nothing profound, just assembly instructions, registration numbers.
She ducked down to avoid tangling with a pipe and some wires that had spilled out of a panel in the ceiling above sometime in the distant past, and made her way forward through another bulkhead into a large habitation module beyond. It looked like it had been used for the storage of farming equipment and spare parts for machinery. As she made her way towards the conduit on the far side, she nudged another section of piping that hung down across the entrance and dislodged a cloud of dust and sand that sprayed across her face and hair.
‘Aghh!!’ she grunted, and spat several times. ‘Lovely.’
*
Ellie fixed the oxygen tent with relative ease, a task she had carried out innumerable times before with the help of her Dad. When she had finished erecting the small two-person plastic cylinder, she attached a bottle of oxygen to the tent’s inlet valve. The tent was big enough for her and Jez and Harvey to sleep in together. Jez was okay with sleeping head to toe with Ellie, but she had grumbled at the idea of sleeping so intimately with Harvey. But then, thinking about it, if Jez was bringing the cat round, then Harvey could sleep in the cabin instead if Jez really insisted.
Problem solved.
She finished her work on the tent in time to watch the very top of the sun flatten and slide along the horizon leaving a bloom of crimson light in the sky above.
‘I love watching the sunset,’ she said to Harvey. The jimp looked at her and cocked its head on one side.
‘Sssssun-seeeettt?’
Ellie pointed towards the horizon, where the last light of day was rapidly diminishing. ‘Over there, it’s pretty isn’t it?’
Harvey turned to look where she was pointing, and then looked back at her expressionlessly. He nodded. ‘Like ssssun-seeeettt.’
He likes it? Ellie studied him curiously. ‘You know Harvey, they say gene-imps aren’t supposed to be able to like or dislike anything. That you don’t have enough brain inside that thick skull to know what you like.’
Harvey tilted his head, and his brow furrowed with concentration. Maybe they were right. Harvey looked up at her and pointed one finger towards the sky.
‘I like ssuunnnn-sssseet,’ he said, and then pointed at her, ‘I like Ehhh-leeeee.’
Ellie shook her head with amazement. ‘There really is more to you than meets the eye, isn’t there?’
She was positive she saw the faintest flicker of a smile on his lipless mouth.
CHAPTER 13
Jez spotted the shuttle a hundred yards away from where Ellie had parked the cat earlier that afternoon. From the black and white strip across the wings and the tail-fin, illuminated by landing lights, she could see it was a marshal’s ship.
What’s a city marshal doing out here?
Her first instinct had been to lay low inside the module she was in and see what was going on. She snapped off the torch and watched with growing curiosity through a scuffed, sand-blasted porthole as several torch beams flickered across the cat. She saw the silhouette of someone leaning forward to look inside the plexitex blister. The thought occurred to her that maybe something awful had happened to Ellie’s family, or perhaps Aaron, and the police had arrived to bring the girls the news.
But then as the torch beams flickered around and across one of the men, she saw he was carrying a weapon.
That’s not good.
She felt a cold thread of fear weave across her chest.
It was quiet out there, silent. The men - she counted six of them - began to move with a steady purpose towards the colony’s buildings. She wondered how they could have arrived without either her or Ellie hearing the roar of the shuttle’s engines. They must have cut them on approach and glided down stealthily. That was why it was parked so far away from the cat…to ensure even the un-powered thud of touchdown on the hard-baked clay wouldn’t be heard.
As the dark forms drew nearer she could hear their voices. They spoke quietly and intermittently. Although she couldn’t hear yet what they were saying, the intonation sounded foreign; they had off-world accents.
A torch beam flickered momentarily across the small porthole she was looking through and she quickly ducked out of sight, hoping that her sudden movement had not attracted any attention. Moments later she heard the rattle of footsteps up an entrance ramp and onto the metal grated floor, echoing down inside the colony structure towards her.
Freg, they’re looking inside!
The footsteps grew louder and more numerous as it seemed all six shadowy figures had entered the interior. After a few moments they came to a halt. Jez guessed they were in the very next module to the one she was cowering in.
‘So, they’re in here somewhere,’ said a voice muted by an oxygen mask, a softly spoken man. From the gentle tone of it, someone used to giving unquestioned orders. He didn’t sound like a law marshal. ‘Alright, let’s not mess around here. Shoot them on sight, do you understand?’
She heard the murmur of assent from the others.
The softly spoken one continued more quietly. ‘As soon as you’ve got their samples, Nathan….I want you to take them back, along with the Quin family tissue samples and prep them for testing. We’ll take the first flight off this cruddy planet as soon as we’re done here.’
The footsteps resumed again, growing louder as the men swept down the short connecting conduit towards her module.
Oh crud.
Jez scrambled across the floor and under a workbench as the dark module suddenly danced to life, illuminated by the beams of half a dozen flashlights as they panned from one side to the other.
‘This place is a goddamned maze. We’ll need to do this systematically. But before we go any further, you…’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Disable the caterpillar. Without that they’re not going to go anywhere.’
Jez heard one of the men leave the room, his echoing steps receding, a
nd then there was silence, save for the distant moan of the wind and the mask-muffled draw and pull of several men breathing.
Jez struggled to sip the air from her mask as gently and quietly as she could.
*
Ellie heard the distant clatter of footsteps echoing all the way through the colony ruins to her. Harvey stirred uneasily and stared at the darkness beyond the open hatchway from which the noise had emerged.
‘It’s okay Harvey, just Jez tripping over her platform boots again, no doubt.’
There was nothing more to be heard except the fading echo. She wandered over towards the opening, pulled down her oxygen mask and cupped her hands.
‘Jez!! You alright in there?’
*
Ellie’s faint voice bounced down through the myriad of conduits and modules to where Jez hunched under the bench, and the men stood in silence only a few feet away from her.
‘That’s her! That must be the Quin girl,’ said the softly spoken man.
‘Which way did that come from?’ one of the others said.
‘I don’t know. It could have come from any damned direction. We need to spread out and work our way across. You…’
‘Yes, sir?’ replied a gruff, deep voice. It sounded clipped and soldier-like.
‘You stay here. When your colleague comes back, you can both follow us in. We’re going to search every nook and cranny in this place, cabin by cabin. Nathan and you, take this exit. Leonard, you’re with me, we’ll take this one. Now let’s go.’
Jez heard the rustling of movement and the clank of footsteps as the men filtered out of the module, leaving one of them behind; the one that sounded gruff like a trooper.
She waited as the footsteps of the other four receded, and then, cautiously leaning, she peeked around the edge of the workbench at the man waiting for his colleague to return from sabotaging the cat. By the light of his torch, which panned slowly around the enclosed space, she could make out very little, other than he was rather tall and carried a big gun.