Chung Kuo - The Marriage Of The Living Dark Part 4

"I don't know."

But Daniel did know. It had been triggered, and not just by the handful of dust he had thrown at it Whoever lay behind this had been after him. Had wanted to take him out -specifically him. And had wanted to do it when all the team were there to witness it.

He looked up at the tiny probe that hovered at the level of his eyes.

Why now? he wondered. Are you tired of watching me?

Or was he simply being paranoid?

That last thought brought a smile to his lips. Aidan saw it and frowned. Don't crack up on me, his eyes said.

"I won't," he answered out loud, wondering what they'd make of those two words. "Then lef s go," Aidan said. "And remember ... call any earth-movements. There are burrowers out there."

"Leon ... Leonl Sit down!"

Leon turned, glaring at Aidan, then, seeing from Aidan's face that he would brook no further argument, did as he was told. Even so, he sat there hunched forward, picking at the floor with his gloved fingers, unable to rest, his eyes twitching here and there as if he suspected the stones themselves to transform into sudden enemies.

Delirium, Daniel thought, studying him a moment, noting how the swelling behind his right shoulder had grown this past hour.

They were crouched on the rocks above the fall, the roar of the water filling the air all around them. Half a kilometre behind them was the bridge and beyond it the tap. But there had been a host of machines at the tap - many more than were usually there - and to attempt to cross there would have been foolhardy, even if they hadn't already lost Benoit in the woods. Aidan had decided to press on along the bank and cross further up, then double back, coming upon the tap from higher ground.

But it was as difficult to cross the river here as it had been back by the tap. More so, if anything, for the current seemed twice as strong and the sides of the ravine through which it pa.s.sed twice as steep. And then there was the problem of Leon.

Leon stood once more, looking about him. A low growl escaped him. "Leon?" Daniel kept all anxiety from his voice. It was important now to keep calm. To act as if things were perfectly normal. Leon twitched round, looking at Daniel, his gun pointed straight at Daniel's chest Stepping up to him, Daniel pushed the weapon's muzzle aside. "If s okay, Leon. It's okay."

Leon seemed to shiver. Then, with a small, self-conscious nod, he squatted down again, his weapon balanced across his knees. But his eyes still flicked from side to side nervously, a deep anxiety in every line of his face. From the look of it there were poisons in his bloodstream.

Daniel stepped behind him and bent forward, looking at the swelling. As far as he could see, it now stretched right down his back. Through a crack in the armour Daniel could see how dark the flesh was, almost purple-black in colour, and as he looked he saw something within that darkness move, something small and mechanical, one tiny, fork-like limb snowing its outline briefly as it pressed up against the outer skin.

Aidan, standing at the lip of the fall, had seen nothing. He was staring out across the mist-filled gulf, his head turning now and then to consider possibilities.

There was another tap, three kilometres to the west, but they would never make that. They had to recharge, and soon.

As it was they were low on sh.e.l.ls and grenades, and the Exit Gate was still more than fifteen kilometres to the north.

Aidan turned, looking to him, then spoke into his helmet "We need a rope."

"True. But we haven't got a rope."

"So how do we get across?"

"We blow it"

"What?" Aidan came across. "Blow it?"

"Sure. We can't wade it, and we can't jump it and we haven't got a rope. But we could block it Temporarily, that is."

"You mean, blow a chunk out of the bank?"

Daniel nodded. "And as the dust settles we quickly skip across. Before the water builds up again."

"You think it'll work?"

"I haven't a clue. But nothing else is going to, is it?"

Aidan smiled. "I guess not"

"Then lefs not wait." And, taking a grenade from his belt, Daniel primed it and lobbed it down onto the bank some fifty metres below the ledge they were on. "Come on!" he yelled, as the others scrambled to their feet, realising what he had done. "Lets get down there, before the whole lot comes down on our heads!"

"You think this is it?" Aidan asked, turning to Daniel.

"Looks like it," Daniel answered.

There had been rumours among the boys of an armoury, somewhere in the region of Buchenbach, but no one could swear to having seen it Like much else it was thought of more as legend than true fact But here it was, a strange bunker-like building, cut into the side of the mountain, below which ran a stream. And astonishingly there was a bridge. A new bridge, made of solid wooden slats.

CROSSING THE RIVER.

Daniel looked about him suspiciously. They were gambling now. The darkness was falling, and Leon was going mad, and ...

He swallowed deeply. He had thought he was imagining it at first, but then he'd checked a couple of times and seen that it really was so. They had three camera bugs on him now. Three!

Was the Man himself watching? Was that it? Were they putting on a show for him?

He gripped his gun tighter, then looked to Aidan again. "Well?"

"Okay," Aidan said, his eyes briefly uncertain. Aidan had not wanted to come this way. He'd wanted to go back and take the tap, whatever the cost But Daniel had persuaded him. After his luck at the river he seemed to have been on some kind of a roll. So why not? Because I was guessing. And that guess might cost us all our lives. He did not know why he had persuaded Aidan, but he had. It had been the same kind of instinct that made him turn left and loose off a round even before he saw or heard the threat from that side - a "sixth sense" some called it The same thing that got him through this living h.e.l.l each time. He stared hard at the building, certain now that it was the armoury. And even if it was a trap, they would survive it He'd take them in and bring them out. And why? Because he had an instinct for it Aidan had not moved. Thirty seconds had pa.s.sed and Aidan had not moved. Behind him the four boys waited in a line, stretched out a good three metres between each of them as they faced the armoury.

"Okay," Daniel said, "lets go in."

So it's me now, Daniel thought, and wondered at how, in a single moment, command had switched from Aidan to himself.

Confidence, he told himself. They see it in me. Pure self-belief, shining from me like a beacon. Why, even Aidan sees it and acknowledges it, for there's no room here for uncertainty. No mercy for the faint-hearted. Daniel smiled at the thought, knowing that somewhere they were watching him; smiling perhaps because they were watchinghim. Then, unclipping the rocket-launcher from his back, he stepped out onto the bridge.

"f.u.c.king h.e.l.l!" one of the operators said quietly as he watched the team cut their way through the guards and into the first level area. "They don't stand a chance," another of them said, pushing back from his machine, his face registering a kind of awe at what he was witnessing. All around the ma.s.sive control room, men were sitting back from their screens, that same look - part shock, part awe - on every face. "Seal us off," Dublanc ordered, coming down the metal steps. At once the great blast shields came down at either end of the room. Standing beneath the bank of screens, Dublanc stared, then shook his head. It was true. They were used to watching these teams compete against machines that looked like insects and, though boys died, it was all a kind of game. But now, against human opposition, they were revealed for what they were - the ultimate predators. A nightmare with twelve arms.

"You want me to flood the level with gas?"

Dublanc turned to York and snarled. 'Til have .yew f.u.c.king ga.s.sed, you a.r.s.ehole!

Look at them! Just look at what we've made!"

And now he smiled. Smiled as Daniel reloaded, then blew away another pair of guards.

They shouldn't be anywhere near here, he thought That's why we buHt the Core here between the rivers, to make sure they didn't come anywhere near, but Daniel blew that safeguard away when he blew a path across the river. "Pull back!" he ordered. "Let them have the level."

"But the armoury ..."

One look silenced his a.s.sistant.

Dublanc turned back, watching as the team broke down the armoured doors, then went to the racks and, with the care of experts, selected the weaponry they would need to go back out into Eden. Good NorTek weapons with heavy duty munitions. Pride, he thought, that's what I'm feeling. Pride in these little b.a.s.t.a.r.ds.

And the Man?

Maybe DeVore ought to see this, no matter what happened from here on. It was certainly unusual enough to warrant his attention. Then again, DeVore didn't want to know about failures. So maybe he would wait, after all.

"I was wrong," he said aloud, grinning as he looked about him at the crowded operations room. "There was I thinking Daniel was getting paranoid, when all the while he was getting smart"

The full moon was halfway up the sky when they came to the tap at Breitnau. In its light they could see the towering presence of the wall, no more than four kilometres distant They had made good progress, but it had been at a price. Johann had been cut by a clipper-fly and Ju Dun had trodden on a spine-beetle. Both wounds would have to be treated, and soon, but most worrying of all was Leon.

Leon was on the edge.

Not only that, but it was night now, and at night Eden exploded into sudden, vicious life.

In an insane mimicry of life, the mind that had devised Eden and its occupants had chosen to stay dose to the pattern on which it drew. In the insect world most bugs lay quiescent during the heat of the day, their shape and colour blending into the background, effectively hiding them from sight Yet at night they'd come alive So it was that machines that had rested throughout the day, drawing power and energy from tiny solar panels set into their wings and into the flanks of their long, segmented bodies, now buzzed or scuttled about, their infrared night-sights seeking out every source of body-heat Yet they too gave off traces of warmth from the tiny engines that powered them, and it was these the boys now depended upon, their guns locking on each bright flicker as it appeared in the darkness that surrounded them. From the watch-towers on the wall, the guards, looking back into Eden, could mark the team's slow progress, not merely by the sound of gunfire and explosions, but by the display of pyrotechnics that accompanied the team, sudden bright coruscations lighting the sky briefly, then several vivid flashes and, a moment later, the pock-pock-pock of an automatic. And at the heart of that, Leon, his eyes dark with pain, firing at anything that moved, real or imaginary.

The tap was just ahead of them. Through their visors, the boys could see it as a broad glow, constantly in movement where hundreds of the mechanoids cl.u.s.tered about it. The spigot of the tap shone like a tiny spire, poking up from the centre of that glowing, shimmering ma.s.s. From moment to moment it would seem to bulge, as if oozing a great blood-drop of light, then pulse, before resuming its sharp, needle-like shape.

Daniel glanced across at Leon. The whole of Leon's back now heaved and pulsed with the burgeoning life within. You could see the glow of the tiny, growing mechanoids through his armour as faint presences, yet where the plate was split, the glow was livid, shining out like a magma flow in rock. Every bug for kilometres around was being drawn to him. Yet Leon, mad as he was, dangerous as he was, had one final use before he was done.

Leon would get them the tap.

"Leon? Leon..."

Leon's gun swung round. Daniel could not see his eyes through the visor, but he could sense from his agitated movements just how close he was to doing for them all. One burst of rapid gunfire and they'd all be dead. "Leon, I've a job for you."

Did Leon understand him any longer? And if he did, would he still respond to orders? Or had he gone beyond that now? Had they left it too late? "Leon, listen to me carefully. I want you to draw the swarm from the tap. Do you understand? I want you to take them off and then, when I give the command, I want you to seal. You got that?"

There was a grunt The gun swung away. Leon looked towards the tap. So you are still in there, Daniel thought, feeling real pity for the boy now that the moment had come. And maybe you even understand what's happened to you. But it won't be long now, I promise.

"Okay," Leon said, the first word he had uttered in over an hour. "I..." He groaned as the teeming life inside him visibly shifted. "I'll go in." The others were all watching now. They saw how Leon jogged toward the tap, his body hunched and weary; saw how the glowing ma.s.s seemed to shiver with a sudden agitation as it sensed his proximity.

Slowly Leon began to move to the right, and as he did, he opened fire, sudden gashes of pure white light exploding within that general numbing redness. Once more the glowing ma.s.s seemed to shimmer. Then, with an eerie silence, it began to lift into the air, a great flickering cloud of red that rose with an infinite slowness to hurl itself at Leon.

Yet even as it rose, a vivid pencil line of light streaked out, joining the bright-lit figure of Daniel to Leon.

The explosion ripped Leon's suit apart. Leon stood there a moment, flaming like a torch, then tumbled forward and lay still.

"Okay," Daniel said, as the brightly glowing swarm fell upon the fallen boy.

"Let's take the tap."

CHAPTER-3.

white s.p.a.ce.

Daniel woke to the crump-crump-crump of Aidan's rocket-launcher. Ju Dun was bending over him, shaking him awake.

"Bees!" he was shouting. "Beesl"

Daniel was instantly alert "Where?" he asked, getting to his feet and drawing his gun, even as the first of the three sh.e.l.ls detonated. "Coming out of the sun!" Aidan yelled, a note of apprehension in his voice.

Crump-crump-crump.

Six shots left, Daniel thought, his visor darkening as he looked into the sun. Johann and Christian were at the windows, their visors blacked to cut out the glare of a sun which seemed to be balanced on top of the wall, three kilometres off, like a searchlight beamed directly at them. "I can't see the f.u.c.kers!" Johann shouted anxiously.

"Don't bother looking for them," Aidan yelled back, "just fire into the sun!" "Aidan's right," Daniel said, his voice quiet but commanding. "Don't worry if you can't see them. They're there all right. Can't you hear them?" They could hear them, even over the sound of gunfire. And once you heard that sound you couldn't really hear anything else - not if you'd fought against bees before.

Bees, the most innocuous of insects, the most friendly as far as humans were concerned.

Only these weren't cuddly little honey bees, these were ferocious fighters; soldier bees, ten to twelve inches long; semi-intelligent genetic machines, developed from an old GenSyn patent, which had only one idea in mind - to destroy unwanted intruders.

Daniel blacked his visor, then put his gun to his shoulder and fired blindly into the s.p.a.ce directly in front of him, slewing the gun from side to side and not releasing the trigger until the chamber was empty. And still the sound of the swarm grew.

Dead.

He had only ever fought bees once before, and that had been on his second tour. There had been seven of them at the beginning of that brief encounter. At the end of it there had been only him and two other boys. Most teams weren't even that lucky.

Daniel undipped another gun and opened fire again. There was a deep, circular shadow now at the centre of the sun, a dark spot, like the pupil of a golden eye. The bees were still several hundred metres off, but the intensity of the noise suggested they were right on top of them. "Stun?" Aidan suggested.

"Won't work," Daniel answered. "We'll get some of them, but the rest will simply sit on us until we unseal, then pick us apart" "Then what the f.u.c.k do we do?"

Keep firing, he thought, but he didn't know if there was enough ammunition in the Garden to bring a whole swarm down. Why, there could be anything up to a thousand of them out there.

"Back off!" he ordered. "Into the store room. We'll block the door and sit it out" The store room had a packed earth floor and a solid stone ceiling. It wasn't big but it was large enough to hold the five of them. As they began to back towards it, there was a scream.