Lee Brack took his helmet off and stared around in confusion. "What bloody emergency?" He was in the middle of Stereotype Street suburbia. On the other side of the road an old couple were walking their chocolate Labrador. In front of him an attractive girl was out jogging. Actually she was sprinting damn fast. She came to a halt beside the Scarret "Thanks," she said.
"For wh—"
Her hands grabbed the front of his one-piece bikesuit. Lee Brack was lifted off the Scarret's saddle as if he were made from lightweight foam rather than his actual weight of ninety-five kilos. He chased a short arc through the air to land badly on his left arm, with the shoulder taking most of the weight. Something amid his bones and tendons made a nasty crunch. Only then did he manage to yell.
The girl snatched up his helmet and straddled the Scarret. Lee's cry of pain turned to outrage as the dashboard display lit up. What about his fucking security codes? "You bitch!"
Denise's Prime simply erased the Scarret's AS and installed itself in the neurotronic pearls that governed the bike's systems. With her d-written neural structure integrating her directly into the software, it was as if she'd become part of the bike. Power burned into the axle motors, and she turned the handlebars in smooth unison with the alignment power coupling. The U-turn was sharp enough to scrape a parking leg on the tarmac. Sparks fantailed before it finished retracting. Denise accelerated hard, losing Lee Brack's barrage of obscenities within seconds.
The jeeps were approaching the edge of Memu Bay's original gamma soak. Strands of darker, bluish vegetation were mingling with the terrestrial grass on either side of the Great Loop Highway. Up ahead the jungle of native vegetation was steaming gently after the early morning rains. In the passenger seat of the first jeep, Lawrence had a good view of the wide strip of tarmac cutting straight across the land until it disappeared into the trees.
Finally they were leaving the villages behind. They were dotted every few kilometers along the highway, clusters of small buildings that lined the road, almost identical each time—a couple of general stores, always a bar, and some kind of low-tech industry. Truck garages were fairly common, with rows of corroding hulks parked out on the grass. Road maintenance robot stations, also with broken-down chassis strewn around. A semiautomated steel mill churning out I-beams. A reclamation furnace with tall twin stacks blowing out thick, greasy smoke into the clear air, a huge stinking pile of rubbish sprawled over the land behind. The houses that accompanied them were a lot cruder than the fine whitewashed apartment blocks in Memu Bay. These were little more than one-story shacks with walls of cinder block and a roof of composite sheeting and solar collectors. Adults sat outside, watching the road and its traffic. Kids ran about on the dirt paths, chasing after one another, playing soccer.
"None of this was here last time," Lawrence said as they drove through a little conglomeration calling itself Enstone. A big sign was stuck up on the side of the highway, advertising the boatyard that had spread over a couple of acres beyond the row of houses.
"We're twenty klicks from the sea," Lewis protested.
"Cheaper to build out here," Amersy said. "This is Memu Bay's secondary economy. It always starts to grow up around prosperous settlements that have been established for a while. The bigger the population the bigger the percentage of semiskilled and transient workers."
"You mean poor people," Dennis said.
"I certainly do."
The traffic on this stretch of the Great Loop Highway was also a lot heavier than Lawrence remembered from last time. Most of it was trucks or vans that were dropping in and out of the little factories and businesses, shuffling supplies and material between them. At this rate, he thought, it wouldn't be long before the villages merged into a single urban strip.
They were passing through the last highway village when Lawrence's Prime notified him that another Prime had queried the patrol assignment. Another Prime? he asked it. There was no margin of error.
It must be KillBoy, he thought. It was the only explanation. In fact it made perfect sense. He'd always known the resistance people had sophisticated subversion software available. Strange irony, though, that it should be Prime; in twenty years this was the only copy he'd ever encountered.
"I want sensors switched to search pattern A-five," Lawrence told everyone. "Have your AS review the input for localized data traffic and electronic activity. Someone's just taken an interest in us. There may be a few hostiles around here."
"How the hell do you know that?" Amersy asked.
"I have some smart software that can spot illegal askpings. And someone queried our patrol. Someone outside Z-B."
"Christ, Sarge," Karl said. "They should make you general."
"That's some software," Amersy said dryly.
"Yeah. Come on, people, look lively." He checked his telemetry grid to make sure they were activating their sensors. When everyone had upgraded he turned around and checked on Hal, who was riding in the back of the jeep. The kid was leaning on the door so he could look out across the countryside. Wind was thrashing his short hair about. He had a permanent lopsided grin as he watched the scenery flash past. Edmond was sitting beside him, feet resting on a box full of the medical supplies that Hal's modules used.
"Everything okay?" Lawrence asked.
Edmond waved casually. "Under control, Sarge."
They crossed the border between terrestrial and Thallspring vegetation. The only other vehicle left on the Great Loop Highway was a tractor unit pulling a flatbed trailer that was trundling in from the hinterlands. When they passed it, Lawrence saw the trailer was loaded with trimmed tree trunks. He wondered how legal that was. There were several plants in town that synthesized wood.
"Let's go," he said to Dennis, who was driving the lead jeep. "I want to reach Arnoon by nightfall."
Dennis lowered his foot down on the accelerator, and the jeep began to pick up speed.
Since the call came in, Newby had been operating on a permanent adrenaline high, and it felt glorious. This kind of action was what he'd envisaged when he joined the cell. But ever since the invaders landed, all he'd been asked was to keep some bulky sealed boxes in the back of his father's shop, hidden underneath the crates of empty bottles that were waiting to be collected. He did get a thrill from the strangers who would come in and give him the password, either collecting or delivering boxes. It made him feel part of something important. At twenty-three years of age, it was the first sense of belonging he'd ever known.
Now finally the cell had been put on active status, with a critical duty. He joined his fellow cell members Carole and Russell around the back of his father's store and climbed into the battered old pickup. Any thoughts of a quiet getaway were ruined by the gut-rattler roar of the truck's ancient combustion engine as it fired up. He winced and grated through the gears, racing away as his father came running out.
The instructions received and decrypted by his bracelet pearl were simple and accurate. He stopped to pick up another cell: three people he'd never seen before. Two pudgy pasty-skinned men in their late twenties that he suspected were brothers. The third man was slim and dignified, at least sixty years old, wearing pressed jeans and a denim shirt with a lace tie; his Stetson was also clean and expensive. He looked like money to Newby. But they all had the right password, and each of them carried two intriguingly heavy cases. They squashed into the back of the pickup, and all six of them headed east along the Great Loop Highway toward the Mitchell foothills, with Newby pushing the old engine hard.
They chose the ambush site deep in the jungle, where the road had already begun its climb up to the plateau. It was an area of exceptionally lush vegetation, with creepers and vines that grew at near-visible rates. The battle between the undergrowth and the highway maintenance robots was as fierce as ever. Constant pruning by energy blades meant that the wall of foliage on either side of the road was now almost solid. Overhead, where the robotic implements couldn't reach, the branches had knitted together over the tarmac wound
, creating a somber arboreal tunnel. Ragged strings of creeper hung down from the apex, acting as conduits for the rain-soaked canopy above. They dripped sour water across the Great Loop Highway like botanical stalactites.
Newby had to use the pickup's headlights, it was so dismal under the trees. When they finally spotted a gap in the thick tangle of undergrowth along the side of the road, he turned off and slowly maneuvered the pickup through the trees until it was a hundred meters away from the tarmac and completely invisible. Aramande and Rufus, the brothers, immediately set about fixing explosive charges to trees beside the road. They handled the little charges efficiently. During the journey they'd explained that they took part in occasional unlicensed logging operations in the jungle, where a lot of trees needed to be felled quickly. Nolan, the old man, had opened up the remaining four cases. They contained the kind of weapons Newby always dreamed about using against the invaders. Nolan assembled a chunky gun with quick professional motions. He called it a thunderbolt. The short barrel was eight centimeters in diameter, with a loading mechanism that looked as if it had been put together out of components from a hardware store; there was no electronic augmentation. It fired rounds as big as a fist. Nolan slapped in a bulky magazine and handed it to a delighted Newby.
"You get this because these rounds are energized explosive," Nolan said. "In other words, it doesn't matter if you're not very accurate. Which I don't believe you are. We think a direct hit from one of these will kill a Skin suit. A close hit will almost certainly damage one. So when we stop the jeeps and I give you the okay, you fire this magazine at them as fast as you can. The idea is to destroy the jeeps and kick the shit out of the Skins. Then you put in the second magazine and aim for individuals." He handed another thunderbolt to Carole. "The five of you will be shooting these at them simultaneously, and you'll have the jungle to provide cover. In those circumstances, it will be difficult for them to shoot back, but not impossible. Their sensors are good and they're backed up by an AS. They will be able to spot you. Understand? That's why you must keep the barrage going."
"What are you going to be doing?" Carole asked.
Nolan opened the last case. There was a rifle inside that had a barrel nearly a meter and a half long. Even to Newby's untutored eye it looked deadly.
The old man took it out and patted it fondly. "I'll be going for the precision strike."
Newby found himself a tree with a decent solid trunk over two meters wide. It was twenty meters from the Great Loop Highway. If he crouched down between two big buttress roots he had a clear view of the crumpled ribbon of tarmac. A pair of interface glasses kept him in touch with the others. Nolan had brought them as well as the guns. They were all linked with fiberoptic cable, which he'd unspooled across the jungle floor.
"This way we can communicate without transmitting," he'd explained. "It'll help keep our exposure to a minimum."
So now Newby waited with his legs folded uncomfortably and the dreadful humidity soaking his shirt and giving him a serious itch all over. Tixmites had found him, and were eagerly exploring this new supply of nourishment. He was swatting the tiny insects every few seconds as they gave his skin another painful bite. Now that he had time to look around properly, he could see their glistening nest mounds swaddling the tree trunks all around him.
His earlier excitement had faded. Nerves were chewing at his confidence. Shrill birdcalls made him twitch. He wanted this to be over. Twinges of cramp began to shoot down his calf muscle.
"I hear something," Russell's voice whispered in his ear.
"What?" came a chorus of whispers from the others.
"Could be them."
"Very well," Nolan said. "Now remember. Stay calm. This will be short, noisy and brutish. Do not lose track of our objective among all that. We have to support each other. That's the only way this will work."
"I won't let you down. Not me." Newby was slightly abashed to realize he'd spoken it out loud.
"I know you won't, son," Nolan said gently.
"It's them," Aramande hissed. "I see them."
"Very well. Rufus, don't leave it too late."
"Hey, man, I know what I'm doing."
Newby shifted around slightly, lifting the thunderbolt up ready. He looked along the fat barrel toward the road. Sure enough, a jeep was approaching. Headlights glared amid the gloom and shadows. There was another one just behind it He could see the Skins sitting inside. The first jeep was almost level with him when Rufus blew the tree. It was a simple enough trap. One tree down in front, blocking the road, forcing the jeeps to stop. Then a second would be blown behind them, preventing any retreat. They'd be in a killing zone, with the thunderbolts ripping them to shreds.
The brothers really did know what they were doing. The charge in the trunk blew out a huge section of wood at the base, shaped just so. There wasn't much of a flash, or noise. The tree crashed down, tearing through the hundreds of vines that knitted it to the rest of the jungle. It landed almost at right angles across the tarmac, thirty meters ahead of the first jeep.
Newby jumped to his feet, bringing the thunderbolt to bear, finger squeezing the trigger. But the first jeep wasn't even slowing. He thought he saw a couple of bright-orange flashes somewhere among the seated Skins. Two explosions detonated in the middle of the fallen tree. They were terrifyingly powerful, pulverizing a vast section of the trunk. A shrapnel cloud of deadly dagger-sized splinters erupted out of the twin fireballs, shredding the surrounding vegetation. The two surviving sections of the tree on either side of the explosion were shunted apart violently, leaving the road clear.
"Shoot!" someone yelled in Newby's ear.
He was in the act of flinching as several dozen of the fatal wood splinters scythed through the air around him, but managed to pull the thunderbolt's trigger anyway. The recoil nearly wrenched his arm off. God alone knew where the shot was aimed. He recovered and tried to take aim on the first jeep as it sped past. Explosions burst through the forest on the other side of the road. One went off on his side, about thirty meters away. The blastwave was muted by the trees, but still managed to punch him into the trunk that he was using as cover. His interface glasses were flung off. He yelled wordlessly at the pain, unable to hear himself. His ears stung, but the world had fallen completely silent.
More explosions were pounding the jungle, bright orange-and-violet light strobing weirdly. There seemed to be two different kinds, one a lot fiercer.
With his knees barely supporting him, he managed to roll his body around against the trunk until he was facing the road. A jeep was driving past. He brought the thunderbolt up again, surprised by the runnels of blood he was seeing on his hands and sleeves. The weapon wobbled as he lined it up on the speeding jeep. He pulled the trigger. An emerald laser fan swept across him. All he could see was a dazzling green haze. Then something exploded in midair halfway between him and the jeep. He was flung backward as a dreadful torrent of heat scorched into him. He could feel the skin on his cheeks and forehead shriveling. His hair smoldered as he crashed down into the sharp, prickly undergrowth.
Newby laughed, or cried. He wasn't sure which. But his lungs were juddering as his throat convulsed. His whole body was numb as shock blanked out the pain. He could see very little, just simple silhouettes. He blinked a few times as he scrabbled around feebly in the mud and broken branches. It took effort to lever himself up onto his knees. The laserblast had left huge gray mists floating across his vision. He whimpered as the numbness quickly gave way to a terrible cold gnawing deep into his flesh. Then he was shaking uncontrollably. The jeeps had gone. Several fires were burning amid the shattered trees. Smoke braids coiled around the trunks as they drifted up toward the canopy.
A dark mote streaked past his head from the direction of the road, so fast he thought it was some phantom, part of the damage the laser had wreaked on his eyes. But there was a tiny rigid contrail in the air, marking its passage.
Newby turned to see where it had gone. The contrail was curvi
ng at incredible speed, weaving fluidly around the intervening trees as it chased through 180 degrees. His brain sent a flood of nerve impulses out to his lungs and vocal cords, preparing them for a scream. They weren't fast enough.
Lawrence didn't allow them to stop until the jeeps had climbed up onto the plateau itself, and they were free of the jungle. During the last section of the climb the Great Loop Highway had gradually eroded to little more than a path through the trees. The tarmac had crumbled away from a combination of heat, water and roots. This far from Memu Bay, the budget for highway maintenance robots no longer allowed for resurfacing. The best they could do was keep the original route clear. Vehicles that traveled out here had the kind of gearing and suspension to cope with a mud track.
The jeeps had certainly managed. They'd come through the attempted ambush with several dents from chunks of flying wood, and the paintwork was scarred and scorched. But the engines and wheels were intact.
Dennis braked to a sharp halt as soon as Lawrence told him he could, tires kicking up a cloud of sandy dust.
Lawrence turned around. The sniper's bullet had caught Edmond at the base of his neck, slicing clean through the Skin carapace. There was nothing the Skin's medical program could do for him. The bullet had spun inside him, hacking through muscle, blood vessels, nerves and even shattering two of his cervical vertebrae before punching out through the back of his shoulder. There was just too much damage.
Hal's arms were flung around his friend, as they had been for the last hour. Even with half of his facial muscles impaired, his anguished expression was terrible to see.