‘Wasn’t the war, Sergeant,’ Naz replied, settling back to scan the horizon. ‘Was back in LA. Dumb shithead I knew got caught th a house full of pharm goods, and thought he could shoot his way out when the cops turned up on his doorstep. His gun had a systems failure ’cause he didn’t take proper care of it. Had a white coffin at his funeral. Priest in white, wife in white, all three girlfriends and his favourite whore in white. Tackiest shit I’ve seen in my whole life.’
Monk sighed. Naz had wound up working for Array Security and Immigration after spending a year riding shotgun on convoys passing through Pakistan and Mexical, and that only because the alternative had been jail. He wasn’t the kind of guy Monk liked having on his team but, then, Monk didn’t get a say in the matter. So he kept an eye on Naz, waiting for him to make a slip, do or say the wrong thing, anything that might give Monk an excuse to file a report or have the son of a bitch reassigned. But Naz never did give Monk the excuse he needed. He was, to Monk’s boundless irritation, what the military TriView feeds liked to call an ‘exemplary soldier.’
They reached the turn-off to the airfield, a private stretch of road owned by the ASI, and stopped for a couple of moments to let an automated checkpoint remotely query their Ubiquitous Profiles. The truck’s wheels kicked up mud as it pulled off the expressway. A sparkle of light several kilometres ahead betrayed the location of the airfield’s conning tower.
The armoured personnel carrier carrying the rest of the squad had already negotiated the turn-off. Monk knew that in the back of the truck he was driving was a sealed containment unit, newly arrived via the Array from some exotic off-world location. Monk had no idea what might be contained within it, and couldn’t care less. More lichen or mineral samples, probably. Scientist shit, at least. All he’d seen was a steel box with fat wheels and a push-handle, with vacuum seals and hazard warnings printed on all sides. It had been wheeled into the back of the truck by two technicians in hazmat suits.
An icon appeared, floating in the air to Monk’s right, indicating a bright-red alert. He touched it with a finger and information appeared, rendered in chrome letters floating in the air.
‘My UP says there’s been an accident up ahead,’ he muttered, glancing forward. Beyond the APC, the road to the airfield looked empty, but it was hard to be sure with all the rain. ‘About two kilometres up ahead. An automated transport.’
Naz pushed himself up in his seat and peered through the windscreen, his weapon clanking against the glossy black of the dashboard. He cleared his throat noisily, wound the passenger window down and spat out into the rain. ‘I can see all the way to the airfield, Sergeant,’ he replied, ‘and, with all due respect, I don’t see shit.’
‘Maybe there’s a glitch in the monitoring systems,’ Monk muttered, turning the wheel to pull in at the roadside. ‘Call the tower for confirmation. We can wait here till we get the go-ahead.’
‘Confirmation?’ Naz’s expression was incredulous. ‘With all due respect, Sergeant, there’s
nothing
on the road and I also know you ain’t blind. We need to keep going.’
That was the problem right there, thought Monk; Naz didn’t understand the necessity of sticking to the rules. ‘If the systems says there’s an accident up ahead, then the regulations say we don’t move until told otherwise.’
‘Then the regulations are fucked, Sergeant.’
‘We stay here,’ Monk snapped. ‘Whatever’s up there could be carrying hazardous materials or some other poisonous shit. Search and rescue’ll be here in another couple of minutes, anyway.’
Naz twisted around in his seat to look at him more directly. ‘Look out that window, up ahead of the APC. I know it’s raining, but it ain’t raining that heavily. Between here and the airfield, do you see anything?’
Monk had to admit the road ahead looked empty all the way. He glared at Naz, then reluctantly opened the mike to Rosewood, in the APC, and ordered him to drive up ahead. He watched as the carrier pulled back out into the road and accelerated away.
Despite what he’d said about a glitch, Monk knew the ASI’s mapping satellites were near as damn infallible. If they said there was something blocking the road up ahead, then there was something definitely blocking the road. No surprise if an ex-jailbird grunt like Naz was too dumb to understand that, and yet, as he watched the APC retreat into the distance, Monk couldn’t ignore a growing sense of unease.
It wasn’t like the Mexical ’jacking crews worked this far east, after all. In fact the ASI extended their security envelope far beyond the CTC mass-transit facility, and their present convoy was well within the hundred-kilometre exclusion zone. There were only two tightly controlled air corridors, along with aerial spotter drones programmed to hunt out anyone hiding in the swamps and bayous who shouldn’t be there. Monk himself spent three days a week in charge of a manned ground patrol.
He assuaged his nervousness by checking his armour, layers of Kevlar alternating with artificial spider-silk that could absorb the impact from any number of high-calibre rounds.
Naz muttered something under his breath, clicked his Cobra’s safety off and cracked open the passenger-side door.
‘Hey,’ said Monk, outraged. ‘I didn’t tell you that you could—’
‘This doesn’t feel right,’ Naz snapped back, jumping down to the roadside and taking a two-handed grip on his weapon. ‘I think we should at least rec—’
Monk saw Naz’s eyes widen, and glanced forward just in time to see the APC, a hundred metres up ahead, come crashing back down on to its roof, bodies tumbling out of its rear like broken dolls. The sound of the detonation arrived a moment later, a flat bass thump deadened by the rain, branches and dirt pattering down all around their own truck.
He turned back to speak to Naz, but the man wasn’t there anymore.
It occurred to Monk, in that same moment, that their truck might very well be next. He kicked open the door next to him and threw himself out of the cabin, hitting the ground with his shoulder and rolling away, before picking himself up and making straight for the cover of the trees on the same side of the road Naz had been on.
He slid down an embankment until he came to a stop against a tree, then yanked the safety off his own gun, wishing with a mixture of regret and aggravation that he’d checked it as thoroughly as Naz had his own. He tried to uplink to Command, but the security channels were all blocked.
It looked like they were on their own. He sent a signal to the truck, activating its defence protocols. He heard it shift and rumble as it reconfigured itself accordingly.
Monk waited long, tense seconds, the chirping of cicadas intermingling with the sound of the APC burning. The air meanwhile smelled of mud and burning plastic.
It was starting to look like whoever or whatever had hit the APC wasn’t going to try and blow up the truck, too, which meant they were almost certainly after the containment unit in the rear.
He heard rustling in the bushes, then spotted Naz’s back about twenty metres ahead, moving cautiously through the undergrowth towards the thin trail of greasy black smoke that betrayed the APC’s whereabouts. He was, Monk noted with disgust, intent on being a goddamn hero.
Just as Monk opened his mouth to yell, he heard a low, throbbing buzz like a chainsaw. Something flashed overhead in the same moment that Naz glanced back in Monk’s direction, after presumably hearing the same sound.
Monk instantly dropped down into the long grass and saw an aerial drone flashing through the treetops, heading towards Naz’s location. He raised his Cobra, squinting down the sight, but, before he could fire, the ground beneath Naz erupted and he disappeared in an uprush of dirt and leaves.
Chunks of wood, soil and Naz himself pattered down all around Monk, and he suddenly felt his bowels threaten to loosen.
Keep it together
, Monk told himself, once again trying his best to make himself as small a target as possible. But the drone was now moving further away from his location.
Monk let out a silent sigh of relief. If the drone was anything like the ones used by ASI, it would be equipped with IR sensors, and no way was he going to be able to hide from shit like that.
Monk crouched down low, considering his options, then heard a sound he at first took for another car or truck pulling up at the roadside. The sound grew deafeningly loud, and a dark triangular shape dropped down beneath the treetops, rapidly descending towards the road. A VTOL pond-hopper, by the looks of it.
He doubled back the way he’d come, retreating along the ditch and pulling himself up the embankment once more, panting and swearing all the way. The drone had by now passed over to the other side of the road, its rotors buzzing increasingly far away as it hunted for survivors. He’d been lucky,
very
lucky, not to end up the same way as Naz.
Monk kept himself flat in the long grass bordering the verge of the road, his Cobra in front of him as he looked around. The truck was sitting right where he’d left it, but it had closed its doors and adopted a rounder shape by curling itself up like an armadillo, and then surrounding itself with sheafs of armour plating. He watched as the VTOL – a sleek-bodied machine with the black hawklike appearance of a military unit – sent a furious blast of air rippling across the road and through the surrounding trees, as it dropped down alongside the truck.
Monk batted leaves and grit away from him and waited, as the VTOL’s engines died down to a low hum. Before long a door cranked open in the side of the craft and two men in jumpsuits climbed down. From what he could see out of his vantage point in the long grass, they wore standard ASI air-patrol patches on their shoulders. One headed for the truck, while the other moved towards the rear of the jet.
No way are they ASI
, thought Monk, watching them for a moment. The uniforms didn’t look quite right, like they’d been imperfectly faked.
Monk heard the chainsaw buzz of the drone as it circled round towards him, then saw it pass back across the road in his direction. He figured he had maybe thirty seconds before it passed over him a second time, and he was pretty sure that this time it wouldn’t fail to pick out his heat signature.
He scrambled backwards down the embankment, and pushed himself in as far as he could get between the wide, blade-like roots of a banyan tree. With any luck those thick, damp roots would block out his heat signature.
His heart thudding, he watched the drone pass overhead but, instead of blowing him to pieces like it had Naz, it kept going. Monk let his head fall back against the gnarled trunk behind him and groaned with relief. He had two, maybe two and a half minutes tops, before it came back his way a third time.
He quickly crawled back up the embankment and peered through the long grass in time to see one of the two hijackers wheeling the containment unit back over towards the VTOL. The VTOL’s nose section had meanwhile opened up to reveal a ramp, looking like some winged monster with its jaws wide open and its tongue lolling across the road.
Monk glanced beyond the ruined APC, now struggling to push itself the right way up, like some mortally wounded animal, and saw the drone once more pass across the road and into the treetops on the far side. Before he could change his mind, he leaped up and ran, crouching low in order to present as small a target as possible, before dropping to one knee and preparing to open fire.
One of the hijackers spotted him and shouted a warning. Monk instantly let loose a rapid blast of fire from his Cobra, and saw the man collapse with a scream. The second hijacker ran for the cover of the containment unit, and began to return fire.
Monk flattened himself on the road and glanced towards his truck. He had maybe sixty seconds before the drone passed back over the road and spotted him. If he could take out emaining hijacker before then, he could hide under the truck bed, where the drone’s IR sensors wouldn’t be able to distinguish his heat signal from that of the engine.
Monk heard the surviving hijacker reload his weapon, and took it as his cue to again dart forward. A second later, he heard a buzz-saw whine coming from entirely the wrong direction.
He gazed up in stupefaction at a second drone hovering almost directly over the roof of his truck, the downdraft from its rotors scuffing up dirt and leaves from the tarmac as it moved closer. At the same time, he heard the buzz-saw rattle of the first drone returning through the trees.
There’s two of them
, Monk realized, with a sudden lurch of terror. Maybe the second one had stayed invisible on the far side of the truck, or maybe he’d activated a motion detector of some kind . . .
The last thing he saw was the flash from an exhaust port as the drone launched a grenade at him.
Copernicus City Medical Centre, Luna, 20 January 2235
Saul had been gazing out at the distant cliff walls of Copernicus Crater, when he heard someone enter the observation room from behind him. The Earth hung low above the horizon, the lights of the city blotting out all but the brightest of stars, so that the planet seemed to float in a lightless void.
He reached down and gripped the right-hand wheel of his wheelchair, pushing back on it so that he turned just in time to see one of two men he didn’t recognize close the door, shutting out the constant bustle of the hospital corridor beyond.