Aftershock (18 page)

‘Don’t worry, I’m bringing Malpense and company in first,’ Raven said as she watched Otto and the others climbing the boarding ramp of their Shroud. ‘If anyone can make it to the twenty-four hour mark, it’s going to be them and I intend to make sure that they don’t.’

‘You know I have every faith in your abilities, Natalya,’ Nero said with a small smile. ‘And yet, somehow, I doubt that it’s going to be quite as straightforward as that.’

The Shroud carrying a dozen hand-picked members of Raven’s hunter squad touched down on the rocky ground and the loading ramp at the rear of the passenger compartment whirred down.

‘Couldn’t they have chosen somewhere warmer?’ one of the men complained as he walked down the ramp. ‘You’re sure we have the right coordinates, I suppose.’

‘’Fraid so,’ another member of the squad replied as he followed his team-mate down the ramp. ‘Remind me why we agreed to do this again.’

‘Because Raven asked us to,’ the first man said, ‘and, I don’t know about you, but I’m not in the habit of refusing requests from her.’

The men all filed off the Shroud and proceeded to spread out and set up a perimeter.

‘I found a hot tub and several cases of beer over here,’ one of the men reported over the comms system. ‘Scratch that, my mistake, it’s actually countless miles of frozen forests and mountains. Woohoo!’

‘Cut the chatter, hunter four,’ the commander of the squad said. ‘You should be happy we’re all alone out here. Something tells me that our Russian friends wouldn’t be too pleased if they knew we were here.’

‘This is Black Seven, I think I may have something here. It’s . . .’

The commander tapped his earpiece as the comms signal suddenly dissolved into a steady hiss of white noise.

‘Repeat that last, Black Seven,’ the commander said. ‘I’m losing your signal.’ There was no reply, just static.

The commander was about to signal the Shroud when there was a sudden shimmer in the air and a figure appeared directly in front of him, a pistol raised. There was a flash from the suppressed muzzle of the gun and the hunter team commander fell lifelessly to the ground. The assassin walked to the Shroud and climbed inside. The co-pilot turned as the masked man entered the cockpit and slumped back in his chair as the silenced pistol coughed once. The pilot spun in his seat, raising his hands as the assassin turned towards him.

‘I need you to send a message,’ the assassin said with a Russian accent. ‘I strongly suggest you do as I say.’

Raven walked down the passenger compartment of the Shroud, checking on the other students. They all wore black environmental suits over their uniform jumpsuits, which would provide them with some protection from the freezing temperatures at their destination.

‘I see you two have fitted right in,’ she said as she approached Tom and Penny. ‘I’m not sure if that is a good thing with this particular group or not.’

‘Oh, yeah,’ Penny replied. ‘Once we got past the whole being brutally knocked unconscious and kidnapped stage it was surprisingly easy to settle in.’

‘Not to mention that we’re just such a great bunch of people,’ Shelby said. ‘Who could fail to be won over by our easy-going charm, good looks and confidence?’

‘And the overwhelming modesty,’ Otto said, ‘don’t forget the overwhelming modesty.’

‘Frankly, we just feel lucky to be allowed to come along on such an
exciting
adventure,’ Tom said sarcastically. ‘You kow, it’s funny, it was only the other day that I was saying to Penny that what our lives were missing was the opportunity to be dropped in the middle of nowhere and then be hunted down by a team of special forces soldiers. It’s actually quite uncanny. We can’t believe our luck.’

‘Oh, don’t worry,’ Raven replied, ‘you won’t be out there long. I should have rounded this whole group up within . . . oh, I don’t know . . . two or three hours. The amount of hot air you all generate should make your thermal signature quite easy to track.’

‘Was that a Raven joke?’ Otto asked. ‘I can never tell.’

‘Oh, you can always spot my jokes, Mr Malpense,’ Raven said with a cold smile. ‘They’re the ones where you die laughing.’

‘Point taken,’ Otto said with a slightly nervous smile.

‘She seems to be . . . dare I say it . . . in a good mood,’ Nigel said as Raven walked back towards the cockpit.

‘Kinda scary, isn’t it,’ Shelby said. ‘It’s a bit like a shark smiling.’

‘You OK?’ Otto asked Laura as the others continued chatting.

‘Yeah, I’m fine. Why do you ask?’ Laura replied.

‘You just seem quiet, that’s all,’ Otto said.

‘Sorry, I don’t mean to be,’ Laura said. ‘I’ve just got quite a lot to think about thanks to a certain person I shan’t mention.’

‘Sorry, I know it wasn’t brilliant timing,’ Otto said. ‘You were right though, let’s talk about it properly when we get back.’

‘Thanks,’ Laura said as she put her hand on his and smiled.

Otto moved across the compartment and sat down next to Wing.

‘Is everything OK with you and Laura?’ Wing asked quietly as Otto sat down. ‘You can, of course, tell me to mind my own business but I have detected a slight change in your demeanour around each other.’

‘Maybe,’ Otto replied, sounding slightly uncomfortable. ‘I’ll let you know.’

‘Shelby will be most pleased,’ Wing said with a smile.

‘Do me a favour and don’t say anything to her just yet,’ Otto said. ‘I don’t need the whole of H.I.V.E. knowing.’

‘I should warn you that she is remarkably adept at spotting when I am concealing something from her,’ Wing said. ‘Under such circumstances she has been known to employ physical torture.’

‘You mean she tickles you,’ Otto grinned.

‘As I say,’ Wing replied with a small nod, ‘physical torture.’

Nero and Colonel Francisco watched the large tabletop display in the centre of H.I.V.E.’s security control room. Technicians scurried around them, ensuring that all of the systems feeding data into the huge console were functioning correctly.

‘Real-time uplink with G.L.O.V.E.net spy-sat established,’ a nearby technician reported. On the display an image of the selected site for the Hunt base camp appeared. The Shroud that had transported Raven’s hunters to the site was visible to one side of the landing area.

‘This is Shroud One to Hunt control,’ a voice came crackling over the comms system.

‘This is Hunt control, Shroud One,’ the communications officer to Nero’s left replied. ‘Go ahead.’

‘Landing area is secure, H.I.V.E. transport flights are cleared for approach,’ the pilot of Shroud One reported.

‘Roger that, Shroud One. Remaining flights are on final approach – they should be with you in less than five minutes,’ the comms officer replied.

Nero glanced at the radar display positioned alongside the satellite imagery of the base camp. The Shrouds were fully cloaked and therefore completely invisible to radar but the G.L.O.V.E. satellite could still detect their transponders and show their position. For the briefest of instants there was the flicker of a faint radar signature somewhere near the base camp’s position.

‘What was that?’ Nero asked with a frown.

‘Looked like a glitch,’ one of the technicians on the other side of the console replied. ‘Probably just a flock of birds or something.’

‘Give me imagery of that area,’ Colonel Francisco said, noticing the frown on Nero’s face.

‘One second,’ a technician replied. ‘Repositioning camera now.’

Nero and Francisco exchanged concerned looks as the image on the display blurred and then resolved again.

‘There!’ Nero snapped, jabbing his finger at the display. ‘Zoom in.’

The area that Nero highlighted expanded to fill the screen. Clearly visible were two helicopter gunships hovering behind a hill less than a mile from the Hunt base camp.

‘Get me Raven now!’ Nero snapped.

High above the Siberian wilderness in a geostationary orbit, the G.L.O.V.E. surveillance satellite trained its incredibly powerful camera on the situation that was developing six hundred miles below. There was no way for it to know that it was being targeted by another satellite that was in a slightly higher orbit. This satellite had only one purpose and it had just received the command from its base station to carry out its mission. Tiny jets adjusted its rotation, bringing its targeting systems to bear on the G.L.O.V.E. machine. In fractions of a second, those systems calculated the differences in their comparative velocities and fed a firing command to the central processor. A single slim dart shot from the array of tubes slung beneath the kill-sat’s solar panels and shot towards its target. The tiny missile covered the distance between the two machines in just a few seconds. It struck the G.L.O.V.E. surveillance satellite and it disintegrated silently into thousands of tiny pieces of debris, now just another cloud of space junk orbiting the Earth.