The Mandel Files (51 page)

“Amen,” the Trinities whispered in chorus.

“Amen,” Eleanor added.

“OK. Tool up. Move out.”

The Rockwell was a wound monolatrice-filament tube one and a half metres long and twenty centimetres wide. It had a broad leather strap so Eleanor could carry it across her back. She lifted it up and realized just how dependent she was going to be on the Trinities for protection from the sentinels. She was confident she could carry it to the manor, but the weight was going to slow her down.

After she’d settled the cannon into place, Suzi clipped a Braun laser pistol on to her belt. “Twenty-five shots, or a five-second continuous burn,” Suzi said. “Don’t fret yourself none about getting it wet, it’s waterproof.” Five power magazines were added. Eleanor felt like protesting about the extra weight, but held her tongue. Suzi’s normally infallible barbed humour had evaporated.

The seven of them splashed into the middle of the stream. Teddy and Suzi paired at the front, Roddy took up station on Eleanor’s right-hand side. On her left was Victor, who was carrying a couple of high-density power units for the Rockwell along with the message laser. Nicole was on his left, and Des brought up the rear.

The graphics display had reproduced a perfect profile of the stream’s winding course for her; a memory loaded straight from the security core Royan had burnt. It’d been built by the landscape team who had fashioned the manor’s grounds; they had made the actual bed from fine, hard-packed sand, then layered it with long strips of worn limestone pebbles. The width was a near constant four metres where she stepped in, with the water coming half-way up her shins, After a minute she managed to find the best rhythm for walking, not quite lifting her sole out of the water. At least they were going in the direction of the flow. Heat was draining out of her feet. Her toes were already numb.

Teddy held his hand up. “OK, people. Hoods on.”

Eleanor reached back and pulled it over her head. A circle of skin around her eye sockets tingled briefly. The photon amp fed its monochrome image into her retinas, suit graphics confirming the neck seal’s integrity. She breathed air through the filters, dry and metallic.

She took it as an offhand compliment that nobody checked to see if she’d fixed her hood properly.

The stream ran through a thick braided cassia hedge ten metres ahead, the dividing line between the sugar-cane fields and a broad tract of undulating meadowland. Eleanor saw a line of posts spaced seven or eight metres apart had risen up in front of the hedge, two metres high and featureless except for a small red light flashing away on top. The earth around them had been torn as they’d pushed their way up out of their recesses.

Her photon amp picked out a band of forest about eight hundred metres past the hedge. She didn’t like to think about lugging the Rockwell all that way. And how far was the manor beyond the forest?

THREE HUNDRED METRES, the graphics told her, Oh well.

“Boundary,” Teddy said. His voice was muffled by his hood filters. “Now is when it starts to hit the fan. OK, Suzi.”

Both of them brought up their AK carbines. There was a bass stutter and the two posts on either side of the stream disintegrated. They switched their aim to the next pair.

In the end they took out eight before Teddy was satisfied. His arm signalled the advance.

Eleanor meshed the infrared into her image, alert for any sign of the sentinels. The function fuzzed the outlines a little, but she saw a couple of pink spots pelting away from the stream. Stoats, invisible before.

The meadowland here offered little or no cover. The grass was knee-high, laced with weeds and keck. Nothing had grazed on it for months.

Two hundred metres past the boundary markers and Teddy stopped them again. He plucked one of the smallest spherical grenades dangling from his waist and twisted the timer. “Down.”

Eleanor squatted, her backside below the surface of the water. Growing cold. Teddy lobbed the grenade out across the meadowland. Crouching down. Five seconds later there was a barely audible thud.

Another line of posts rose out of the ground ahead of them. Eleanor could hear grass and soil ripping. This time there were no red lights on top.

Suzi and Teddy took aim with their AKs.

PRESSURE-SENSITIVE PICKET, said the graphics, when she asked. There were another two picket lines between them and the forest, The memory core didn’t have any information about what they did if you walked between them, Presumably, if you were talented enough to be on this kind of mission you ought to know.

They yomped on.

The stream’s banks were growing perceptibly steeper. Eleanor thought the water was getting deeper too. Her view across the meadowland was shrinking. Thick patches of watercress choked both sides of the stream. Roddy and Nicole had to walk through it, kicking away a tangled wrap of tendrils from their legs every few paces.

Eleanor was glad of the brief rest when they came to the next picket line.

Victor pressed his head up to hers. “You OK?”

The AKs demolished another set of pillars.

“Fine.”

There was a quick squeeze on her upper arm.

Suzi and Teddy reloaded their carbines, jamming in fresh magazines with hard snaps.

The stream fell on harder rock. It was narrower now, deeper. The water came up to Eleanor’s knees, Teddy slowed the pace, edging cautiously round the sharper turns.

“How about a couple of us walk along the side?” Suzi said. The banks had risen until they were level with Eleanor’s head. She couldn’t see much of the meadowland now. What was visible seemed to be small deep hollows, and ground-hugging bushes. There could’ve been anything hidden out there. Her breathing was coming faster.

“No,” Teddy said.

Suzi didn’t argue. Discipline, Eleanor thought it would’ve made a lot of sense to have someone who could look out over the meadowland.

They rounded a bend and saw the last line of picket pillars had already emerged from the earth. Five AK carbines came up in reflex. There was a moment’s pause.

The sentinel came at them through the air like a guided missile. Eleanor saw it as a pink streak arcing overhead, forelegs at full stretch, an angel of death reaching for Des. All five AKs opened up, filling the air with a guttural roar. Des was falling backwards, still firing. The sentinel’s heavy streamlined body juddered in mid-flight, its edges distorting as the slugs chewed it apart. Momentum kept it going. Des hit the water. Eleanor’s image was suddenly degraded by a spray of blood painting her hood’s photon-amp receptors. The sentinel landed almost on top of Des, already dead.

“Keep watching!” Teddy bellowed as they all began to move towards the carcass.

Des still hadn’t surfaced. Eleanor felt vomit about to rise from her belly. Forced herself to hold it down. She’d drown if she puked with the hood on.

“Eleanor, Victor, see to him.” Teddy’s words became lost in a strident whistle; already piercing it was rapidly broaching her pain threshold. Eleanor jammed her hands over her ears and floundered towards the dark soggy hump which was the sentinel.

The four pillars nearest the stream had begun to glow violet. Eleanor’s photon amp hurriedly faded them down. She felt her bones beginning to shake from the noise.

Victor was at her side, shoving at the bulky sentinel. She helped him, pushing its hindquarters. It began to move with desperate slowness. The sound from the pillars had turned to fire, drilling into her ears. Concentration was becoming impossible. The dead cat rolled over, and Des thrashed to the surface. Victor pulled at his hood, breaking the neck seal. Des was choking, squirting water, and gasping for air.

The hideous sound level had begun to reduce, Eleanor risked a glance round. Teddy and Suzi were blasting away at the brilliant pillars. Nicole and Roddy were poised in a half crouch, AKs held ready, scanning the top of the banks.

Des’s desperate coughing subsided. The last violet pillar crumpled. Eleanor found she was trembling violently.

Silence closed about them.

Victor shook Eleanor’s arm.

“What?” She couldn’t even hear her own voice.

He was jabbing a finger at Des’s arm. She saw the jumpsuit fabric was torn above the elbow, slashed by the sentinel’s claws. Blood was streaming out of the wound.

The sight snapped Eleanor out of her daze. She made Victor clamp his hand around the wound, reducing the flow of blood. Nicole was carrying the field first-aid kit, She let Eleanor take it from her without ever breaking her vigilance.

Teddy fished the Rockwell and its power units from the water while Eleanor pulled an elasticated sheath up around Des’s wound. It ballooned out as she touched the inflation stud, analgesic foam setting in seconds. She helped Des to his feet. Even with the photon amp’s peculiar vague shading she could tell his face was chalk white.

Teddy handed an AK to Victor and hung one of the power units on Des. He gave the second power unit to Eleanor after she’d lifted the Rockwell again, taking the message laser himself.

“Come on. Outta here.”

Eleanor knew Teddy must’ve shouted it, but barely heard the sound over the occlusive ringing in her ears. The weight of the weaponry was tormenting her spine. Her mind chucked out stupid irrelevances like cold feet and keeping watch across the meadowland to concentrate on the important: thrusting one foot at a time through the churning water. Her flesh was going through the routine, disjointed from her mind. Solitude’s anguish unravelling around her. Alone with people she didn’t know, walking to a place she didn’t want to go to.

They were fifty metres from the forest when Nicole opened fire, her AK a subliminal rumble. The sentinel was hunkered down behind a bush, a clenched shadow, coiled up waiting to leap. It managed a short jump before the slugs bit into its skull. Crashing down into the watercress.

Teddy never even broke stride.

Eleanor trudged past the sentinel, dimly acknowledging how stately its huge head was, humiliated by cracked bone and ripped flesh. There was no honour in death, and it wasn’t even a true enemy.

We malign life, she thought, suborning its grace and majesty to our own purpose, mocking it. Even the reservoir dolphins were a sin, so far from their true home, tame, unable to return. She knew water would never be a refuge for her again, not after tonight.

The stream’s banks dipped down as they reached the forest, but the water remained knee-high. Tall acacias and virginciana trees threw boughs right across the stream; black heart leaves interlaced above Eleanor, blocking even the ashen phosphorescence of moonlit clouds. The trunks were knotted columns coiled by ivy and ipomoea vines; grape-cluster flower cascades dangled down, brushing against her head, A thick carpet of fleshy flowers covered the forest floor, tiny star shapes closed against the night, light grey in her image feed. She imagined the air would be thick with their scent if she removed her hood.

The forest had to be a human concoction, a designer ideal of fey woodland wilderness. Eleanor was staggered by how much it must’ve cost.

“OK,” said Teddy. And she could hear him better this time. “So far, so good. Now, we’ve got a couple of lasers overlooking the stream before we reach the lake, Suzi, you trailblaze, clean ‘em out. The rest of you keep watching for sentinels. This here is prime ambush country. When you leave the tree cover remember to keep yourselves below the water before you reach the lake; means crawling, but make fucking sure you don’t let more than your head show. Those Bofors masers will zap anything over fifty centimetres in diameter. If you do get hit, dive fast, wind up cannibal lunch otherwise.”

“What about the people inside Wilholm?” Victor asked. “They’ve got to know we’re here after the racket the pickets kicked up.”

Teddy patted the message laser. “We put this on wide-beam and use morse code to rap with ‘em.”

“Morse code!”

“Sure, man. Walshaw’s ex-military, isn’t he?”

“Yes,” Victor agreed.

“Then he’ll know morse. Tell him to take a look at you. Means your hood’s gotta come off, though. You be careful.”

“Careful. Christ,”

“OK, let’s move,” Teddy barked.

Suzi took the lead, walking down the living wooden tunnel a couple of metres in front of Teddy.

The forest was alive with creatures, picked out by the infrared as quick-moving pink blotches snaking around the trees. Squirrels, Eleanor guessed. More pink spots slipped across the ground, not even disturbing the flowers. It was faintly macabre, seeing the unseen, Distracting.

The stream began to change, big quarried rocks had been used to line the banks, similar to marble. Water was frothing around their rough-hewn edges. It was getting slippery underfoot, Eleanor’s soles were sliding over loose oval stones. The water was climbing up over her knees.

Suzi stopped in mid-stride, her jumpsuit glaring an all-over claret, rising swiftly towards vermilion. Eleanor marvelled at the girl’s cool as the AK carbine swung round slowly, picking out the laser hidden in the tree. She could never have done that, more like scream and run round in circles. Finally understanding what Teddy meant by discipline, far more than following orders. Curlicues of steam were rising from the stream around Suzi’s legs, the water bubbling. The girl had found the laser, taking sight, pulling the carbine’s trigger.

A sentinel landed on Roddy’s back, Jaw clamped on his neck, hind legs raking his lower back with dagger-like claws.

Eleanor screamed.

Roddy pitched forwards, ridden down by the sentinel. Foaming water fountained up as the two writhed about beside.

“Behind you!” someone yelled.

Victor began firing his carbine back up the stream.

Teddy was pointing his at Roddy and the sentinel, unable to shoot. The sentinel was tossing the man about as though he was a doll.

Eleanor yanked the Braun from her belt, leaning forwards. Saturated black fur twisted into view below her outstretched hand, she jabbed the laser down until it hit something solid and tugged the trigger. There was a blur of infrared energy, flash of singeing fur.

Hot pain smashed into her belly, ripping. Oblivion was smothering in soft black velvet—