Earthfall (24 page)

11

The squad moved from cover to cover, trying to make as little noise as possible. Nat’s prediction had unfortunately proved to be quite correct. There seemed to be a far greater concentration of Voidborn than when Sam and Jay had first scouted out the area the previous evening. They spent most of their time hiding, waiting for gaps in the Hunter and Grendel patrols, and progress towards their objective was, at times, frustratingly slow.

‘Looks like you guys did a really good job of irritating them yesterday,’ Jack whispered as the six of them hid in the darkened front room of an abandoned basement flat. He watched through a tiny gap in the lace curtains as another group of Hunters floated past outside.

‘That’s why we’re going to need a diversion,’ Sam said.

‘I’m starting to wonder if that’s going to be enough,’ Kate said. ‘I mean, I know that Jack’s really good at blowing stuff up, but there’s so many of them. Do you really think that we’re going to get anywhere near the compound, even if they are distracted?’

‘We’re making progress,’ Rachel said. ‘It’s not far to the compound’s outer perimeter. Once we get there we’ll have a better sense of what we’re up against. If Jack’s pyrotechnics can distract enough of the sentries and we manage to mingle with the slaves, we’ve got a chance. If push comes to shove, we’ll just release the virus as close as we can to the centre of the compound and hope that it spreads quickly enough. Right, Doctor Stirling?’

‘Yes,’ Stirling replied. ‘The nanite swarm should spread aggressively to any Voidborn that come within a few metres of a host. It’s not an ideal solution, but it would be better than nothing. It may even be that under those circumstances the resultant chaos would give us an opportunity to enter the structure at the centre of the Voidborn compound and directly sabotage the machine within somehow.’ Stirling had the cylinder containing the nanite dispersal device in the padded backpack that was hanging between his shoulder blades.

‘That’s assuming we ever get out of this flat,’ Jack said. They all heard the thudding footsteps of a Grendel getting closer and the rumble of a drop-ship somewhere overhead. Sam heard the low growl of the Voidborn creature in the back of his head and noticed something strange about it. There was a higher-pitched whispering tone mixed in with the low guttural sound that the Grendels usually made. It was just like a sound he’d heard the previous night.

‘Jack!’ Sam whispered urgently. ‘Get back from that window.’

Jack just had time to turn his head towards Sam, a slightly confused expression on his face, when a Grendel’s tentacle smashed through the window behind him and wrapped itself round his neck. Jack gave a strangled cry of surprise and then he was jerked backwards and lifted through the shattered remains of the window and out of sight. The others backed away, raising their weapons, waiting for the next attack. Suddenly, a familiar voice came from the street outside.

‘I know you’re in there,’ Oliver Fletcher said calmly. ‘Your friend here appears to be having quite a lot of trouble breathing, so I suggest you throw down your weapons, come outside and surrender yourselves to me as quickly as possible. I really am so very keen to meet you all.’

‘What do we do?’ Rachel whispered.

‘We surrender – what else can we do?’ Stirling said with a sigh. ‘Damn it all, how did he find us?’

‘I’m not just giving up,’ Jay said. ‘I say we go down fighting.’

‘He’s got a point,’ Kate said, her rifle still levelled at the window. ‘We’re dead either way.’

‘No,’ Sam said, dropping his rifle on the floor. ‘Surrendering is not the same thing as giving up. Jackson taught me that.’

‘He’s right,’ Rachel said, lowering her rifle and following Sam and Stirling towards the door.

‘Guess this really was a suicide mission,’ Jay said as he watched Kate slowly lower her weapon.

Sam walked up the stairs from the flat’s front door and out on to the street. Fletcher stood in front of the Grendel with a triumphant smile on his face. Jack hung a metre off the ground, his hands clawing at the slick black tentacle wrapped tightly round his throat. Fletcher turned to the Grendel, closing his eyes for a split second and the giant creature lowered Jack to the ground and released him. Jack collapsed to his knees, sucking in ragged lungfuls of air. There were drop-ships hovering at either end of the street and half a dozen Hunters were approaching from each direction. Sam heard the persistent buzz of the Hunters in his head, but once again it was layered with the strange whispering he had heard before. Obviously all these creatures were under Fletcher’s control, all thanks to his Voidborn implant. Sam tried to concentrate as Kate and Jay came out of the flat, hands raised. Sam tried desperately to exert control over the Grendel as he had done the previous evening, but it was no good – he couldn’t give the giant creature an instruction. He still had no idea how he’d managed to do it before. The Hunters descended on the captured Ops Team, tentacles wrapping round their arms and holding them in place.

‘How lovely to see you again, Iain,’ Fletcher said as he walked up to Stirling. ‘We’ve been looking for you for
such
a long time. I know someone who is very keen to talk to you. I’m afraid you’re going to find out the hard way what happens to people who betray the Voidborn.’

‘Wake me up when the monologue’s over,’ Stirling said calmly. ‘You always did like the sound of your own voice, Oliver.’

Fletcher closed his eyes for an instant and Stirling gasped in pain as the Hunters holding him tightened their grip, crushing his arms.

‘And you’re still as naive as I remember you,’ Fletcher said, his voice dripping with contempt. ‘And here’s our little Trojan Horse,’ he continued, standing in front of Sam.

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Sam said.

‘Oh, if it weren’t for you it would have been much harder to find everyone. You see, now I know all about your little passenger up here.’ He tapped the side of Sam’s head. ‘I have done ever since you did this.’ He pulled a crystal disc from the pocket of his overcoat and held it in the palm of his hand. A moment later a video was projected into the air above the disc. It appeared to have been shot by a camera on-board one of the drop-ships that had been flying over Parliament Square the previous evening. It showed Sam shouting at the Grendel that was about to crush Jay to a pulp and the monster being frozen in its tracks.

‘You see, you’re not supposed to be able to do that,’ Fletcher said, ‘not unless you have a Voidborn interface implant and only members of the Foundation have those. So once we saw this footage we ran a scan for any implant that had started transmitting within the past twenty-four hours and, lo and behold, there you were, sneaking back towards our compound.’

‘That’s impossible,’ Stirling said. ‘His implant can’t transmit.’

‘Oh, Iain, you’re really nowhere near as clever as you think you are, you know,’ Fletcher said with a nasty smile. ‘The boy’s implant started to transmit the instant he used it to exert control over one of these things.’ He gestured over his shoulder at the Grendel. ‘You can’t have it both ways; the moment he used it, the Voidborn could detect him. They only had to realise that and start looking.’

‘Wait a minute,’ Sam said. ‘What do you mean “one of their machines”? You mean these aren’t Voidborn?’

‘Of course not,’ Fletcher said, laughing. ‘Does this hulking brute really look like something that could enslave a planet? These are just the Voidborn’s tools, constructs that do their dirty work. The machines you call Hunters, the Voidborn call Workers, and these,’ he said, pointing at the Grendel, ‘are Soldiers. Don’t worry, though; ever since your little trick with one of the Soldiers last night the Voidborn have been very keen to speak to you. You’ll be meeting them soon enough, though I have to tell you that I don’t think you’re going to enjoy the experience.’

Fletcher walked further along the line of prisoners, looking at Jay, Rachel, Kate and Jack.

‘You shouldn’t all look so worried,’ Fletcher said, smiling at them. ‘There’s really nothing to worry about. Well, other than whether or not the Voidborn bother with an anaesthetic before they dissect you, of course.’

‘At least I’m not a traitor to my whole species,’ Jay said angrily.

Fletcher closed his eyes and Jay gasped in pain as the Hunter holding him snapped his wrist effortlessly.

‘I can do that all day,’ Fletcher hissed, bringing his face close to Jay’s. ‘Anything else you’d like to say?’

Jay opened his mouth to say something.

‘Jay, don’t,’ Rachel said. ‘Don’t give him the satisfaction.’

He closed his mouth, his jaw muscles clenched, fighting to ignore the waves of pain shooting up his arm from his broken wrist.

‘Your friend here is clearly a lot cleverer than you, young man. You’d do well to listen to her,’ Fletcher said. ‘Well, we can’t just sit around here all night – we have people to see.’ He closed his eyes for a moment and the Hunters started marching them towards the Voidborn drop-ship that was slowly descending towards the ground at the far end of the street. As it touched down, a hatch in the side opened up and a wide ramp was lowered. One by one the Ops Team were escorted up the ramp by the Hunters and into the belly of the Voidborn aircraft.

Sam didn’t bother struggling against the Hunters’ hold on his arms; he knew from the previous night that it would be pointless. They pushed him through the hatch and he got his first look at the inside of the drop-ship. The floor looked like it was made of black glass covered with spiderweb cracks that pulsed with green light. The walls were made of the same material, but they were covered in irregular cuboid blocks that pulsed with an identical eerie glow. The air inside was uncomfortably hot and dry and Sam could hear another background noise in his head, a kind of squawking chatter interspersed with digital distortion. The Hunters pushed him down next to Rachel and held him firmly in place. Jay grunted in pain as the Hunters shoved him next to Sam, with no regard for his shattered wrist.

‘I’ve got a horrible feeling we’re not getting out of this one,’ Jay said quietly.

‘We’re not dead yet,’ Rachel replied.

‘Oh, we’re not out of this yet,’ Sam whispered. ‘Don’t worry about that.’

Stirling was still wearing his backpack.

Sam felt an impact run through the floor of the Voidborn drop-ship as it touched down. He guessed they had been in the air for only five minutes or so and that meant there was only really one place they could be. The Mothership. The hatch at the other end of the compartment opened silently and Fletcher stepped outside. The Hunters holding the prisoners hauled them to their feet and shoved them forward. Sam had spent most of the short journey trying to will either of the Hunters holding him to release their grip, with no success. Whatever it was that he’d done to the Grendel the previous night, he did not seem to be able to repeat it. It seemed unfair to him that the ability that had started his implant transmitting and so given away the Ops Team’s location was now not working when he most needed it.

The Hunters pulled him through the hatch and down the ramp, and Sam’s mouth fell open in amazement at the sight before him. He was in an enormous hangar, its walls covered in the same black glass cuboids that had lined the interior of the drop-ship. One end of the giant space was open but covered by a glowing green energy field, and all around them dozens of drop-ships were neatly lined up with Hunters swarming around them, apparently performing routine maintenance. Above them, hundreds more drop-ships hung from the ceiling, noses pointing downwards, looking almost like bats nesting on a cave roof. Recessed alcoves lined the walls and docked within each of them was a Grendel. There was no sign of life from any of the monstrous creatures, but it was still an intimidating display of power. The walls and floors all pulsed with green light, which seemed to converge and pool around the drop-ships and the Grendels; there was no way of knowing what the light did, whether it was transmitting power or data, or something else entirely that was beyond his comprehension.

What was most overwhelming was the sheer scale of everything. The Ops Team suddenly seemed very small and insignificant by comparison, and for the first time Sam felt a twinge of despair. He had a dreadful feeling that all of their struggle had been for nothing, that they’d just been throwing pebbles at a tank, thinking they could slow it down or even stop it. Their bravado seemed arrogant, foolish even.

‘I don’t think we’re in Kansas any more,’ Rachel said as the Hunters pushed them down the ramp and on to the floor of the hangar.