State of Emergency (6 page)

Stephanie's bleached and formless world began to regain
colour and shape. But she couldn't regain consciousness.
Instead, she was walking along Balmoral Beach on Sydney's
North Shore. The sun was nothing more than a dome of
pinkish red in the east, splashing dawn colours across the
crisp white sand, but it was still hot. She was wearing an
orange bikini and a sarong she had bought in Bali. Her long
legs were deeply tanned and she had just had her blonde
hair cut short.

A lock of hair fell from behind her ear and she pushed
it back absent-mindedly. Someone was walking beside her.
It was her husband, Ted. Her arm was linked in his. He was
laughing at something she had said. At that moment, she
loved Ted so much she thought she was going to burst.

In some ways, he was a typical upper-middle-class
Englishman, stiff and formal, but he understood her, saw
her every quality, her every fault – she worked too hard, gave
him too little of her time, had no serious thoughts about
ever becoming a mother. An athlete from childhood, she was
obsessed with her weight, she over-exercised, and she was
overcritical of him and his bad habits. She had been scarred
by her impoverished childhood, her compulsive gambler of a
father who had led them to ruin, debt collectors and holes in
the roof. She knew Ted loved her despite those faults, her many
faults . . . He had mended her, made her a better person.

Then the agony of recall flooded through Stephanie's
brain. Ted was dead. Of course he was. He was very dead.
His body had been smashed by a Taliban booby trap in the
Barai Ghar mountains while he was fighting in the British
SAS. She hadn't been allowed to see his body. It was in too
many pieces, too much of it missing. But in the rain at RAF
Brize Norton she had watched his flag-draped coffin as it
came down the ramp of a Hercules. She had stood a hundred
yards away with army dignitaries and Ted's relatives.

Stephanie opened her eyes and saw the ceiling imbued
with a soft, warm light from an invisible source. The dread
images faded fast. She moved her head and a pain flew across
her eyes, making her gasp.

'It's alive!'

She turned towards the sound and Tom Erickson's face
came into focus. She tried to sit up, but it was painful.

'I wouldn't,' Tom said. 'Take it easy, Steph.'

She ignored him and winced as she pulled herself up.
'What . . .'

'What happened? You came this close to the bright white
light,' Erickson said, holding up his fingers a fraction of an
inch apart.

She brought a hand to her temple as another stab of pain
shot across her forehead. 'Oh yeah, the pod.' She looked
around the room. 'So what you doing here, Tom?'

'Why not? I have an
excellent
bedside manner.'

Stephanie smiled. 'Where're the others?'

'Oh, the usual – out playing at being Mattel action figures,'
Tom retorted with disdain.

'How long have I been unconscious?'

'Twenty-four hours, or thereabouts.'

'What?'

'It was pretty serious, Steph. Mark managed to get the
door of the pod open with . . . oooh . . .
nanoseconds
to
spare.'

'Nanoseconds? My goodness!'

'Think yourself lucky. You've missed out on the latest
trial.'

'Which is?'

'I'm not really sure, but they're in the middle of it right
now – out there somewhere.' He nodded towards the window.
'Make the most of it and go back to sleep. I know I would.'

A mile and a half away, Pete, Josh and Maiko were feeling
overwhelmed.

It had started well. Earlier that day they had gathered at
Camp Alpha, a cluster of small buildings at the north-east
end of Tintara. The news about Stephanie was all good. She
was on the mend and would be woken from her induced
coma at 14.00. Meanwhile, the three of them had a new
task to complete. With the soft lapping of the waves filtering
through an open window in the meeting room at Camp
Alpha, Mark had explained what they had to do.

'As you know, Tintara is a very small island,' he had said.
'But most of it's jungle, and it's very easy to lose something
in that jungle. In this exercise, one of the technicians will
play the part of a seriously injured civilian with no idea
of survival procedures and no medical knowledge. He is
trapped somewhere on Tintara. You have to find him and
rescue him.

'Straightforward, right? Well, it would be – except for
three things. One, you'll be up against the clock. You have
60 minutes to find the injured man and get him to the
medical facility at Base One. Two, the only thing you'll
have other than your cybersuits is a jungle knife – eleven
inches of blackened carbon steel. And three, you'll need to
avoid being eliminated from the exercise by any one of three
Hunters who will be tracking you.'

'Hunters?' Josh had asked.

'Yep. This is a Hunter,' Mark had replied, lifting the cover
from a spherical object about eighteen inches in diameter.
'They can move through the air, on the ground, even
underwater. And they're fast. They're designed for rescue
missions considered too dangerous for a human operative.
They're equipped with sensors that can be programmed to
seek out a target. In this exercise, they have been instructed
to find three humans – two males, one female.'

'I see,' Mai had said. 'And what do they do if they find
us?'

'You each have a sensor built into your cybersuit. If
they are in range they can zap you and you're out of the
exercise.'

'Kinda like paintball.'

'Precisely.'

'This way,' Pete said. 'To the clearing – I'm picking up a
signal.' He ran ahead, Mai and Josh came up fast behind
him. They reached a small gap in the undergrowth and
crouched down.

'I'm definitely getting a connection,' Pete confirmed. He
was looking at a small flexible screen wrapped halfway around
his forearm, meshed into the fabric of his cybersuit.

They had been trying to get a link with the satellite for
the past fifteen minutes. They needed to get a fix on the
target. Sensors in their cybersuits were supposed to hook
up to a satellite directly over Tintara. This would connect
them to the mainframe at Base One, and beyond that to the
internet. The problem was, Mark had either built in some
interference just to screw them up, or there was a network
problem that wasn't part of the exercise. Either way, it was
impossible to get a precise reading.

'Okay,' Pete said, tapping at a soft pad beneath the screen.
'Something's coming through.'

Thousands of miles overhead, a satellite monitored the
island and the surrounding ocean 24/7. This was primarily
for defence, but it could also be used to locate anything
bigger than a dime. It could also monitor the body heat
of animals. Pete was trying to scan for a stray trace, the
signature of a human hidden in a secluded part of the
island.

He directed the detector on the satellite to zero in on
the middle section of the island. That was where Base One
was located. He could see the outline of the buildings above
ground.

'Switch to infrared,' Mai said.

Pete ran his fingers over the keypad and the image
instantly changed. The buildings disappeared, replaced by a
smudge of light – the infrared signature of over 800 people
and their machines. He guided the image away, and they saw
a few dots of light close to the base, each of them moving
along track roads. They needed to find a stationary signal
somewhere off the main routes. Pete touched the keys again
and the image shifted. He thought he saw a pinprick of light
close to the southernmost tip of the island.

The screen died.

'Oh, hell!' Josh exclaimed.

'Too much of a coincidence to be a network problem,'
Mai said heavily.

'It's irrelevant anyway,' Pete replied. He flicked off the
screen and straightened up.

They all heard a whirring sound at the same time and
spun round to see a Hunter just above the trees to the west,
ten yards away.

There was nowhere to hide. The Hunter could detect
them even if they were hidden from sight. But they dived
into the undergrowth and started to crawl to an area of
denser cover where it would find it harder to get a good
shot at them.

They lay still in the damp vegetation. The Hunter came
close and hovered overhead. Suddenly, a sharp cracking
sound came from the sphere. It missed their sensor pads.

Josh was closest to the edge of the dense patch of undergrowth.
Vines clambered over each other in tight knots. A
huge beetle passed an inch from his face. The insect stopped,
waved its antennae, then trundled off. Josh moved his hand
half an inch and touched a hard, jagged object. A small rock.
He worked the stone into his palm and gripped it tight.

'Mai, Pete,' he hissed, 'I'm going to try something. On
three, scramble away from me in opposite directions, but for
heaven's sake keep under cover. One – two – three!'

Josh sensed rather than saw Pete and Mai move away.
Overhead, the sphere whirred. Josh glimpsed the machine
through the undergrowth. It was hovering about ten feet
above the vegetation. It spun towards Mai and then around
180 degrees to track Pete. Josh pulled himself up, and with
all his strength he threw the rock straight at the Hunter.

The rock whistled past it. The machine spun round and
fired at Josh. He dived into the undergrowth. The Hunter
fired again and missed. Josh tripped and landed heavily
against a boulder, winding himself.

The Hunter came back into view. Josh scrambled away
but there was no cover. The machine came closer. It was
no more than a dozen feet away when there came a loud
clang, and it wobbled. Then he spotted Mai ducking down.
He hadn't seen her throw the rock but her aim had been
better than his.

The Hunter turned towards her, but then Pete sprang
up and launched a rock at the device. It slammed into the
sphere, knocking it aside. The Hunter emitted a high-pitched
whistling sound and plunged to the ground.

Josh gave Mai and Pete high fives. 'Sharp shooting,' he
said.

'Misspent youth,' Pete answered.

'So, what now?' Mai asked. She was panting from the
exertion. 'Am I mistaken, or was there a trace to the south
just before it went down?'

'I saw it too,' said Pete, suddenly excited. 'But it's a big
area.'

'Hang on,' Mai said. 'We lost the signal, but the images
should still be in the system's memory.'

'You're right,' Pete replied. He touched the pad on his arm
and brought up the file browser. Scrolling forward, he found
the final image just before the system had flicked off. They
could see, to one side of the screen, an isolated, motionless
infrared signature.

'Freeze that,' Josh snapped. 'There. What're the coordinates?'
He brought up the map of the island on his own
screen, keyed in the coordinates and matched it up with the
signature. Then he glanced at his watch. 'Zero point three
four seconds west. Let's go.'

The infrared signature was less than a hundred yards
away, but between them and the target dense undergrowth
covered a steep incline. The target appeared to be sheltered
in a small cave at the top of a rocky outcrop. If the satellite
was up they could have found the quickest path through the
dense vegetation, but that luxury was lost to them.

They set off, using the map on Josh's screen to guide them.
Five minutes later they had only managed to get twenty
yards closer to the infrared signature.

It was approaching noon. The sun was almost directly
overhead and the temperature on the ground was nudging
110 degrees with almost 100 per cent humidity. The
cybersuits were keeping their bodies cool by circulating
liquid nitrogen through the intricate network of capillaries
woven into the fabric. But that luxury, too, was short-lived.

Mai was the first to notice. 'Hey, guys, stop a sec.'

Pete and Josh were a few steps ahead of her. They stopped
and turned in unison.

'Is it just me, or are you warming up too?'

Pete and Josh had been too busy slashing through the
undergrowth with their jungle knives to notice. 'Now that
you mention it,' Josh said.

'Oh, Christ!' Pete exclaimed. 'Don't tell me!'

'Another little gift from Mark, I think. No more thermal
control,' Mai said.

Suddenly things got much worse. A subdued hum
came from the three cybersuits and they flicked off
simultaneously.

'What the –'

'The whole thing's down,' Josh snapped, staring in
disbelief at the dead arrays, his screen blank on his arm.

'I bet you the only things working are the sensors for the
damn Hunters,' Pete said.

Almost immediately they heard the familiar whir. A
Hunter was directly in front of them, inside the foliage.
They dived into the undergrowth, but it was too late. The
sphere emerged from a tangle of vines no more than five
feet in front of Mai. It fired, and an alarm sounded from the
back of her cybersuit.

Josh and Pete were quick to respond. As the Hunter fired,
Pete leapt up at the sphere, smashing his blade into the side
of the device. The knife was sharp and heavy, and it sank at
least two inches into the machine, crushing circuit boards
and sundering components. The sphere emitted a low
growl and fell like a stone, its lights flicking off.

Josh and Pete pressed on, while Mai headed in the
opposite direction, towards a track that would return her to
Base One.

It was exhausting work cutting through the foliage. They
were sweating profusely, their cybersuits now useless and
sodden. After ten minutes they stopped for a breather. Pete
checked his watch. 'We've got nineteen minutes. It'll take
at least ten to get the patient to the medical centre at Base
One. Come on, man.' He helped Josh to his feet and they
pressed on.

After two more minutes of slashing through vines and
dense foliage they reached a clearing. From here they could
see the jungle stretching like a green and brown fog hanging
low over the rocky terrain. It was thickest to the northeast,
thinning out to the south-west. In the middle of the
thinner covering they could just make out a rocky hill. It
was probably the highest point on the island. Half of it was
covered with more dark undergrowth and two large acacias
that were smothered with vines. Looking closely, they could
see a rough, dark circle – a cave entrance.

They moved quickly through the clearing, all the while
watching for the last of the Hunters. They made it to the first
outcrop of rock unmolested, and slashed at the vegetation
to find an opening in the trees. No more than 30 feet above
them was the entrance to the cave.

'How long have we got?' Josh asked.

Pete glanced at his watch. 'Four minutes to reach the
patient.'

Josh didn't answer but threw himself into the task with
renewed gusto. He slashed at a web of slender vines that
gave way almost as soon as the blade touched them, and
suddenly they were through.

They were both panting, leaning forward with their hands
on their knees. Josh was wincing. 'Stitch,' he gasped, as Pete
looked at him. 'It'll pass.'

Pete put his hand on Josh's sodden back. 'It's right ahead
– at the end of the path.'

Josh looked up to see a narrow opening between two jutting
rocks, and beyond that the absolute black of a cave mouth.

For a few seconds they felt very exposed as they plunged
into the gap between the rocks. They both knew it was
a perfect moment for the last Hunter to strike, and they
brandished their knives as they dashed forward. Once
through the gap, they followed a path with a rock wall
to their left. An impenetrable mesh of vines and lianas lay to
their right. Six paces on and they reached the cave.

The cool of the shade felt like a panacea, but they had no
time to enjoy it. 'We've got a minute, at best, to find him,'
Josh said, stepping deeper into the blackness.

It took a few moments for their eyes to adjust, but gradually
shapes materialised. There were large rock projections
on either side. The floor was soft with a carpet of rotting
vegetation. It stank.

Josh stopped for a second and leaned forward, his hand
on his side.

Pete thought he looked on the point of collapse. 'You
okay, man?'

Josh nodded weakly but couldn't speak.

They both heard a rustling sound from further inside the
cave. A torch beam cut through the semi-darkness and they
saw a figure standing on a shelf of rock. His features were
obscured by the dazzling light.