It also proved a haven for pleasure boats, with several sport fishing and yachting clubs setting up shop. With so many boats to service, the marine engineering companies and supply industries were quick to seize upon the commercial opportunities available and open premises in the town. Houses, apartment blocks, shops, hotels, entertainment halls, and industrial estates were thrown up all the way back along the shallow valley behind the headland. Villas and groves began to blossom along the slopes above, next to golf courses and holiday complexes.
Billesdon became the sort of town, beautiful and economically successful, that was presented as the Kingdom’s ideal, every citizen’s entitlement.
Sinon’s squad reached the outskirts around midday. A trivial glimmer of light was penetrating the clouds, giving the world a lacklustre opacity.
Visibility had risen to a few hundred yards.
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.
> Choma said.
> Sinon agreed, >
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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 slow-moving 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.
> he said. >
> Choma replied. >
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.
>
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. > he said.
Choma looked up at the ceiling, pointing his machine gun at it cautiously. >
Sinon made his way out into the hall, machine gun held ready. >
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> He put his foot on the first step, sandal sole making a squelching sound against the sodden carpet. >
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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.
> 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.
> Choma said, chortling.
> 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 anomalo
us 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.
> Choma asked.
> 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. >
He was answered with a chorus of: No’s.
> 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.
> Choma said.
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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.
> he announced. >
> Choma exclaimed. >
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> he said grudgingly. >
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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.
> Choma said. >
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 Farquar 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.”
“It can’t, normally,” Diana said. “This whole meteorology situation is highly artificial. The dispersal will influence the planet’s weather patterns for the rest of the year. However, it certainly isn’t sustainable; as I said, the heaviest falls will be over by midday tomorrow. After that, the serjeants will be able to make decent progress.”
“Over open country, possibly,” Ralph said. “But we’re going to have to vector in these booby traps.”
“Do we know what they are, yet?” the Princess asked.
“The majority so far are good old fashioned TNT,” Ralph told her. “Easily produced from the kind of chemicals available in most of our urban zones.
We managed to get some marine engineers in to the afflicted towns to examine what they could. There’s no standard trigger mechanism, naturally enough. The possessed are using everything from trip wires to wired up door knobs. There’s just no quick way to deal with them. The whole point of the front line serjeants is to clear every metre of ground as they advance. Knowing you’re in danger just by walking in to a building is going to be very stressful for the entire army, I’m afraid. Doing the job properly is going to slow us down considerably.”
“So will the mud,” Janne said. “We know where the roads are, but no one’s actually seen a solid surface yet.”
“Progress down the M6 is slow,” Cathal confirmed. “The major bridges are out. We expected that, of course. But the mechanoids are having a lot of trouble erecting the replacements the convoys are carrying, they’re just not designed to operate in this kind of environment.”
“That situation should ease off tomorrow as we
ll,” Diana said.
“The rain, yes; but the mud will still be there.”
“We’re going to have to learn to live with that, I’m afraid. It’s here for the duration.”
> Sinon said.
> Choma answered from the other side of the winding ravine they were following.
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> Sinon stepped over yet another fallen branch. It was mid afternoon of the Liberation’s second day. All the serjeants had received the revised schedule from the Fort Forward Ops Room, they were expected to move across the land at about half the speed originally intended. Very optimistic, Sinon thought.
It had taken until four o’clock in the morning to secure Billesdon. Now they knew they were dealing with TNT, the sensor blocks had been programmed to sniff it out. Given TNT’s relatively unstable nature, there were usually enough molecules left floating round inside the building to provide a positive detection. The damp didn’t help, but by and large, the blocks protected them.
Sinon himself had found two houses that were rigged. They’d learned to tie the blocks to the end of long poles, and push them through windows and doors already forced open by the mud. Each time, he’d designated the buildings, and they were left for the marine engineers to send mechanoids in at some later time. They’d still lost another eight serjeants before the town was cleared.