E-Branch - Invaders Part 45

Jake saw that slender, incredibly strong hand lift up before his face, tried to draw back from it and couldn't . He saw the fingers crook, could almost feel their rake, and knew that he was going to feel it. But then, in a moment, the look on her face changed. And she sighed. She sighed, then smiled again, but a real smile now. And a dribble of blood spilled from the corner of her mouth. Her hand straightened out - reached out to touch his face - but just a touch, almost a caress. Then her grip relaxed, her eyes rolled up, and she toppled away from him.

Lardis Lidesci stood ten feet away, but his machete stood much closer than that; it stood up from the girl's back, where it had split her spinal column.

'Get your gun,' La rdis growled, and Jake began to breathe again after what had seemed like an hour of holding his breath. 'Get your gun and put it in her mouth ... and finish it.'

Jake was numb; his hands were numb as he took up his machine-pistol. 'But...' he started to say.

'But nothing!' Lardis snarled. 'Do it, and be sure to turn your face away.'

Just before Jake did it, Julie stopped her fitful, agonized writhing, saw the weapon's muzzle approaching her face, said something that Jake couldn't hear, just a breath of air. But he was sure that her lips forme d the words, 'Thank you ...'

By then there was plenty of shouting and shooting, the hissing of flame-throwers, great gouts of fire and columns of smoke, all of it towards the centre of the promontory, at the villa itself.

And full moon or none, it would have made no difference; bright orange and yellow flames were leaping, and all the shadows cast back in Jethro Manchester's gardens and rockeries. Lardis and Jake were the las t to get there, but two of the SAS men would never get there.

Close to the house, itself burning, they came across W.O. II Joe Davis and one of his men. The NCO had a flame-thrower and was watching the house. Davis was on one knee, looking at a pair of crumpled figures. His hands kept reaching, and drawing back without touching. And his hands were trembling.

'Get up from there,' said Lardis. 'Back away. Let me see.'

Davis looked up at Lardis th rough moist eyes; he was holding on, but only just, to would-be runaway emotions. His Adam's apple rose and fell, rose and fell, as he fought not to betray himself. 'Old man,' he said, his voice on the point of breaking. 'I trained this man, this boy. He was one of mine. But I didn't train him for this.'

Lardis pulled him away, muttering, 'What could anyone have taught him? There is no training for this kind of thing, except on the field of battle. The trouble with that is we only learn when we lose.'

He looked at the mess on the ground. Part of it, the body of a mature woman in a once-white dress, was a mound of raw red flesh. Riddled with bullets - some of which had exploded - she had been torn apart from within. Her face wasn't there, and her lower body seemed to have burst outwards. Lying under her where she'd fallen, a young soldier in combat clothing stared 504.

505 blindly up into the sky. His brains had been split by a bright shining cleaver that was still buried in his skull.

But even as Lardis looked, the woman's arms twitched where they clasped her victim, and one foot shuddered and vibrated in a shoe with a broken heel. Jerkily, spastically, her chest rose and fell, as bubbles formed in the liquid red mask of her face.

'Did you touch ... any of this?' Lardis looked up at Davis. The other shook his head. Then Lardis stood up, stood back, and turned to the man with the flame-thrower. 'Burn it,' he said.

The man looked at his leader, who in turn looked at Lardis almost pleadingly. And Lardis said, 'Their blood is mixed.

Your man's corpse is contaminated. Take no chances. Burn it all...'

As they moved away from the heat and the stench, Davis got hold of his emotions and said, Tve got men on both sides, in front and at the back of the house. No one's getting out of there. As far as I know that woman was only our second kill.

My kill. G.o.d help me, I did that to her!'

'No/ Lardis shook his grisly head. 'Don't ask your G.o.d for help.

She needed help, and you gave it to her. Also, it was the third kill. We've done one, too. A girl, back there in the garden. So you're not the only one who's feeling sick.'

And Jake said, 'Who was the other?'

'When I killed ... that one,' Davis answered, with a glance over his shoulder, 'there was a scream from the house. A man in a gable window; he ranted and raved at us, tore his hair like a madman. Can't say I blame him. I think the woman must have been his wife. One of my lads fired a grenade in there with him, and it blew the gable to h.e.l.l. Whoever he was, I'm guessing he went with it. But if he didn't he'll burn anyway.

Look.'

They looked back, and by then the front of the villa was an inferno. 'It'll be the same at the back,' said the Warrant Officer.

'They have orders to raze it.'

'But that still leaves three to go,' said Jake.

'Two/ a voice called out, as a man came stumbling from the shadows. He was very pale, and he was carrying his own weapons, someone else's, and a flame-thrower. 'I got a young guy - I blew the f.u.c.ker's head off! - but not before he got Bill Powers. My old mate's dead! ... But there was a girl, too.

She got away.' 'No/ Jake shook his head. 'She didn't.' And: 'Two to go/ said Lardis. 'But where are they?' Right on cue, their radio headsets came alive in a crackle of static like frying bacon. And: 's.h.i.t, s.h.i.t, s.h.i.t!' a frantic voice called. 'Can't anyone f.u.c.king hear me?'

And Davis said, 'Hawkeye, this is Road Runner. Where've you been?'

'Where've / been?' the pilot at once came back, his relief plainly audible, despite that his voice kept fading in and out.

'I've been sitting up here listening to you! The radio's on the blink. I'm receiving but having difficulty sending. Now listen, I've also had problems with the thermal imaging... the heat from that bonfire down there. I sorted that, but now there are life- signs at the boat, two of them. If they're not your people, they have to be the ones you're looking for/ 'Show us the way to the yacht/ Davis snapped, now fully in command again. 'But if it gets away from us and makes a run for the sea, take it out. Bomb the b.a.s.t.a.r.d right out of t he water!' 'Roger that/ and t he signal faded to nothing- -But in another moment searchlight beams lanced down from on high, pierced the night and converged, swung west and traced a path along the channel to the sea ...

In Xanadu, fifteen minutes earlier: Malinari had been tempted from the moment Chop per One descended into the garden. The way it hovered, mere feet above the ground, with its pontoons occasionally touching down, while its task-force contingent rapidly disembarked, regrouped into pairs and fanned out toward the casino: all it would have taken was a little pressure - literally the flip of a switch - and Malinari's worst enemies in this world would have been gone forever. Or 507.

506.

most of them. Only the group from the vehicle would be left alive, to be dealt with at his convenience.

The way his fingers had caressed the array of switches - almost lovingly, certainly l.u.s.tfully - it had been a moment of great temptation, yes. But no, it would have been too easy, and this Trask and his men would have learned nothing of terror, or the merest moment of terror, perhaps, before oblivion. And that just wasn't good enough. Malinari wanted them to understand something of his superiority, wanted them to know they were trapped, even as they had thought to trap him. Then, if there were survivors of his holocaust, and when the flying machine returned to pick them up ... time enough then for the grand coup de grace, the final stroke of genius.

And meanwhile, things had progressed more or less as planned, and Malinari employed his mentalism (but as little as possible) to stay in touch with events as they unfurled.

For his telepathy wasn't without its own problems. Indeed, it was a two-edged sword. For one thing, it brought pain: listening to the thoughts of others was painful. And for another - and most importantly - Lord Malinari himself, his location in the face of the mountain, might be detected and jeopardized if he were to give full rein to his mentalism. For he had learned something (not enough by any means, but something) of the esoteric talents of Trask and this E-Branch from the Foener woman before he'd killed her in the sump of that watercourse.

And he had found out a lot more since then, mainly by trial and error.

But it had been ngreat error to open his mind and accept Bruce Trennier's agonized communication - his final communication - when these people had tracked him down to the Gibson Desert. For, even as Malinari had felt the heat of his lieutenant's funeral pyre, so he'd known a different kind of heat: that of discovery, when a probe reached out from halfway around the world to seek him out, zeroing in on him like a Starside bat searching for a juicy moth, or a Sunside hawk stooping to its prey. A mind had touched his, and left its fingerprint, its signature there, so that he would know it again. And in this last few days he had come to know it only too well. Now it was here in Xanadu, but if he studied it too closely, and if it were to lock on to his location- -That flying machine, that jet-copter, was equipped with armaments that could cut through the false facade of this hollow chimney like a battle gauntlet through the ribs of a disobedient thrall! But it all added to the excitement, the thrill of the game, what little it afforded him: their weird talents, and their puny human minds, against The Mind himself...

So, this seeker, bloodhound, locator, or whatever he was, was one problem - and his talent was one that Nephran Malinari understood readily enough, for he had used just such skills in Sunside four hundred years ago to seek out the Szgany in their hiding places - but the locator's wild talent wasn't the only one that this E-Branch commanded, and it wasn't the only problem. Zek Foener's mind had been full of such things.

A man who could see the future, for example (though obviously he couldn't see it too clearly, else he would never have come here to die), and Trask himself, to whom a lie was like a slap in the face ... there would be no deceiving that one! And as for me ntalis ts: no lack of those. Well, that last wasn't so rare; even the Szgany had something of that in them. It was in their blood, a legacy oftheir centuries under Wamphyri domination. But these E- Branch people weren't Szgany. No, they were adepts, much as Malinari was an adept, but lacking the advantage of his several ... refinements? And of course without the ultimate advantage of being Wamphyri!

Take Zek herself, for instance. What? A woman who could reach out her thoughts across the whole world with such crystal clarity as to be able to speak to a man like Trask - not himself a mentalist - and make him to understand? Oh, he was a loved one, and so there had probably been an element of rapport in it, such as is found in twins. But still and all, that was a talent!

508.

509.

Or it had been ...

Adepts, rivals, enemies, and bloodhound trackers who would never let go. All the more reason why they must go, and tonight. But it would have been so useful to know more about them first. Such people as this precog, and this locator, and Ben Trask himself... and this girl.

The girl, yes ...

She wasn't an adept, not yet; she hadn't attained Zek Foener's level of achievement. But to another telepathic mind (for instance, Malinari's mind) she was like a small flame guttering in the psychic aether, and he had sensed her there from the moment these people arrived in Brisbane. But at such close proximity - because she was close now, and inexperienced - he might perhaps intrude for brief periods without fear of her detecting his presence. Of course, that would leave him open to the locator. But only introduce some small diversion into the game, and that would take care of that. Men, even talented men, when they are concerned for their own skins, have little time for casting about with their minds. Except that they look for boltholes, of course.

Very well then, a diversion. For, in any case, the game was moving far too slowl y.

From his high vantage point, Malinari looked down on Xanadu and the Pleasure Dome casino (dark in the night but clearly visible in every detail to him) and chose a switch on his array.

Down there, his enemies had deployed into first-phase positions. There were men held in reserve, four of them, evenly s.p.a.ced out at the rear of the leisure area of gardens and pools that surrounded the casino. These four would believe they'd 'secured' or 'made safe' their strategic positions behind low walls just forward of the innermost circle of chalets. Equipped with superior, heat-seeking, image-enhancing weapons, they would consider themselves 'ideally situated' to engage an enemy in flight from the central area.

And so they would be - if not for the fact that two of the four locations were mined.

Malinari's hand lingered over the chosen switch, while his scarlet night-vision eyes swept over, scanned, and committed to memory the second phase of the enemy's deployment.

In the last few minutes a large vehicle - an articulated truck marked with the symbols of a well-known beer manufacturer - had climbed the access road, entere d through Xanadu's gates, turned about, and hissed to a halt in the otherwise empty parking l ot. A party of four heavily armed men had issued from the rear of the truck and were hurrying forward into the resort in the direction of the Pleasure Dome.

Inwards - at the inner edge of the gardens toward the casino - five NCOs from the helicopter fanned out to surround the huge rotunda of the central dome i tself. The men from the truck were now replacing the four in their rearguard positions behind the low walls, which allowed them in their turn to move forward and reinforce the a.s.sault force around the dome's perimeter.

Now, or when they were so ordered, three of these Special Forces men would go in th rough the Pleasure Dome's main doors; the rest of them, dispersed around the perimeter, would create individual points of entry. The casino's curving faade of interlocking concrete panels, gla.s.s, and reinforced plastic would scarcely suffice to stop them, Malinari was sure. It was, after all, a Pleasure Dome, not a fortress!

So much for the fighting men. And Malinari presumed correctly that their commander would be with Trask's E-Branch party where they were now gathered in a group behind the smaller vehicle on the main esplanade some seventy or eighty feet in front of the steps to the casino's canopied entranceway. He knew that this was them because of their mental emanations. Hah! Rut they might as well be carrying illuminated signs! They were as Visible' to him as they must be to the pilot of their flying machine ... as indeed he would be, if he were down in the resort.

So, they were all set to go, and the onset of hostilities, which must be imminent, might create sufficient of a diversion in itself, allowing Malinari to insinuate himself into the mentalist girl's 510.

mind without alerting the locator to his presence - but he thought not. Much better to be safe than sorry.

Let them be the sorry ones.

Earlier, before these people got here, Malinari had started a mist. His body and being - even his existence here in this or any world - these things were all contradictions of Nature.

He was a poison that worked like a catalyst on and against any natural or mundane surroundings.

When he opened the pores of his metamorphic body and willed it, his pores would breathe a mist. Not only that but Nature would be made to respond, to answer his call. And even from the dry earth Malinari could call up a writhing mist like vile, airborne sweat, to disguise his presence. In Sunside it had served a dual purpose: to carry his probes more surely to their target (for the mist was like an extension of himself, or a medium for his mentalism) and also to hide him away should he have reason to make a covert exit - in short, a smokescreen.

But this time, so as not to draw attention to himself, he had merely started the thing, set it in motion. And now a fine, milky mist lay on the surface of the pools, and formed a barely visible ground mist in the gardens. But only let Malinari will it, it would spring into being at his command. And in the holocaust to come he would call it up in earnest to carry his mentalism, in stil its primal terror, and add to the gener al confusion.

So then, it was time to set the wheels in motion. Time for his diversion. Time to let these fools know who he was.

He risked a quick, guarded probe, found one of his thralls inside the open doors to the casino, issued a command and withdrew ... but with no time at all to spare! And even as Malinari felt his probe seized upon - and as he 'heard'

Chung's gasp of startled recognition: 'What the ... ?' - so he tripped the first of his switches ...

Six or seven minutes earlier: Inside the innocuous-looking, in fact armoured estate car, Ben Trask, David Chung, lan Goodly, Liz, and the SAS Major were each in their own way concerned. The Major beca use the articulated ops truck and its back- up party were some minutes late.

Chopper One had relayed the reason for the delay: the big vehicle's engine had developed a fault; that and the steepness of the climb had combined to slow her down.

'The gradient,' Trask said, 'but it could have been any of a hundred and one other logistical problems. Well, we made allowances for this kind of last-minute difficulty. It's why we're made up of three contingents: chopper, car, ops truck. Okay, so we're four men short for the time being. But a.s.suming our estimate of Malinari's manpower is accurate, we still outnumber him three or four to one. And our firepower is awesome.'

And Chung said, 'That bot hers me a lot: what you just said about our estimate. For the fact is it's my estimate, so really it's all down to me.'

'No, it isn't,' Goodly denied it. 'It's our best estimate, and we're each of us equally involved in this. Or we should be. And anyway, it's like I told Ben earlier: at least your talents are working for you.'

Trask looked at him. 'Still nothing?'

'Just confusion/ the precog answered. 'And a feeling.'

'You and me both,' Trask said, and the others saw that he was actually chewing his top lip. 'A feeling, yes ... that this is all wrong. Okay, in a deserted resort we'd expect the lights to be out - why waste the energy? But the silence of the place, this feeling of a pent-up something, and this inactivity ...'

'Ours, or theirs?' said Liz.

Trask shook his head. 'I don't know - really can't say - what I was expecting.

But it certainly wasn't this. I mean, h e must know we're here, he has to. So what the h.e.l.l is he up to? David,' he turned to the locator, 'got any ideas? Is there any movement? What's going on?'

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513.

Chung's high brow was etched into deep lines of concentration. It's weird as h.e.l.l/ he said. Tm getting these momentary flashes. It is mindsmog, definitely, but from three or four different locations, and I can't pin them down. Up there in the dome, that's one of them for sure. But the others ...' He looked out of his wound-down window at the night-shrouded cliffs where they climbed to the heights behind the resort, and frowned. 'Up high, and down below ... that's as much as I dare venture.'

'Up high would be the bubble on top of the Pleasure Dome,' lan Goodly came in.

But Chung only frowned.

'Well, possibly,' he said, 'for it's as strong a source as any. But there are shields in use, I'm sure of that.' And: 'Malinari!' Trask grunted, grimly. 'His aerie. Solar-panelled on the outside, painted black and probably curtained on the inside, for his protection. Well, the murdering b.a.s.t.a.r.d will be needing all he can get of that!'

'So that's up high,' said Liz, 'but what about down below ? It looks like Jake was right, and according to the plans of the place it's a real maze down there.' And turning to Trask, 'Ben, I wish you'd let me try to corr oborate David's-'

'-No way!' Trask snapped, turning on her at once. 'That's right out of the question. No telepathic contact, not with Malinari. Only if it becomes absolutely necessary, maybe I'll use you then - but not until, and only if I have to. Liz, this is a mentalist who ranks alongside Janos Ferenczy. And it's one mind you're not going to enter of your own free will!'

Trask and his team were without radio headsets. As espers they needed clear heads, and were better off without the enc.u.mbrance of technical equipment. This was a time when the gadgets would only get in the way of the ghosts. And anyway, since they planned on sticking close to the SAS Major throughout the operation, radio contact seemed superfluous to requirement.

But they did hear the faint crackle of static as suddenly the Major held up a hand.

And a moment later: 'The big artic is in sight.' He sighed his relief. 'They've had a long hard haul, but they're getting here.' As he got out of the car he went on, 'It's time we had a little fresh air, but take cover behind the vehicle. We're in a direct line of fire from the casino.'

'Absolutely!' Chung agreed, choking on the word because of the sudden dryness in his throat. 'And up those steps, right in through those doors, that's another source!'

'You're sure?' The Major grasped his elbow. 'In there,' Chung began to sweat. 'Somebody - something - is waiting!' And in fact, and despite that it was cool and even chilly now, they were all sweating.

Abandoning radio procedure, the Major spoke into his headset. 'You men on the doors had better be aware. There's a reception party waiting for you. Before you go in there, a couple of stun grenades might help clear the way a bit.

The rest of you: if you missed it from Hawkeye, here's a sitrep: the back-up has arrived. The next time you hear from me it will probably be the go-ahead. Stand by for that, over?'

'Roger that,' a mult.i.tude of terse, tense replies came in, then more static and radio silence ...

Seconds ticked by, but oh-so-slowly. Then: There came the rumbling growl of a straining motor, a hissing of air-brakes, and finally the messag e that the Major had been waiting for: 'Zero, this is the back-up squad. Sorry we're late. We're moving into our locations now.'

The Major turned to Trask, said, 'The show's about to commence. Anything you'd like to say to them?'

'Your men?' Trask shook his head. 'Just wish them the best of luck.' And the Major did it.

And Trask thought, d.a.m.n it! I don't even know this bloke's name! Some of his men, but not him. But that's how it goes with these people. In their way they're much like E&tild;Eranch: the less we know about them, the better their security.