The Night's Dawn Trilogy (184 page)

“I’m afraid so. And it looks like Exnall is the worst infestation out of all the four Mortonridge towns.”

She glanced into an AV pillar’s projection. “Nice assignment. Let’s hope my brigade can handle it. At the moment I’m trying
to establish a circular perimeter roughly fifteen hundred metres outside the town. We should have it solid in another twenty
minutes.”

“Excellent.”

“That forest’s going to be a bitch to patrol. The SD sensor sats can’t see shit below the trees, and you’re telling me I can’t
rely on our usual observation systems.”

“ ’Fraid not.”

“Pity. Aerovettes would be exceptionally handy in this case.”

“I must advise against using them. The possessed can really screw our electronics. You’re far better off without them. At
least that way you know the information you’re receiving is accurate, even though there isn’t much of it.”

“Interesting situation. Haven’t handled anything like this since tac school, if then.”

“Diana Tiernan told me the AIs have got very few datalinks left into Exnall. We’ve definitely lost most of the town’s communications
net. Even the police architecture has failed now. So the exact situation inside is unknown.”

“There was some kind of fight outside the police station which finished a couple of minutes ago. But even if that crowd which
gathered along Maingreen have all been possessed, that still leaves us with a lot of the population which have escaped so
far. What do you want to do about them?”

“Same as we originally planned. Wait until dawn, and send in teams to evacuate everyone. But I wish to Christ that curfew
had held. It did in all the other towns.”

“Wishes always wind up as regrets in this game, I find.”

Ralph gave her a speculative look, but she was concentrating on another AV projection. “I think our main concern right now
is to contain the possessed in Exnall,” he said. “When it’s light we can start worrying about getting the rest out.”

“Absolutely.” Janne Palmer stared straight at the ESA operative, and gave him a regretful grin. “And come dawn I’m going to
need the best information I can acquire. A lot of lives are going to depend on me getting it right. I don’t have any special
forces types in my brigade. This was a rush operation. But what I do have now is you and your G66 troops. I’d like you to
go in and make that assessment for me. I believe you’re the best qualified, in all respects.”

“You don’t happen to know Jannike Dermot, do you?”

“Not personally, no. Will you go in for me? I can’t order you to; Admiral Farquar made it quite plain you’re here to advise,
and I have to take that advice.”

“Considerate of him.” Ralph didn’t even need any time to decide.
I made that choice when I put the armour suit on again
. “Okay, I’ll go and tell my people we’re on line again. But I’d like to take a squad of your marines in with us. We might
need some heavy-calibre firepower support.”

“There’s a platoon assembled and waiting for you in flyer four.”

•  •  •

Finnuala O’Meara had passed simple frustration a long time ago. Over an hour, in fact. She had been sitting on a bunk in the
police station’s holding cell for an age. Nothing she did brought the slightest response from anyone, not datavises into the
station processor, nor shouting, or thumping on the door. Nobody came. It must have been that prick Latham’s orders.
Let her cool off for a few hours
. Jumpedup cretin.

But she could nail him. Anytime she wanted, now. He must know that. Which was probably why he’d kept her in here while the
rest of
her
story played out, denying her a complete victory. If only her coverage had been complete she would have been able to dictate
her own terms to a major.

She’d heard the noises from outside, the sound of a crowd gathering and protesting. A large crowd if she was any judge. Then
the sirens of the patrol cars rushing along Maingreen. Speakers blaring a warning, pleas, and threats. Strange monotonous
thumps. Screams, glass smashing.

It was awful. She belonged outside, drinking down the sight.

After the riot, or whatever, it had become strangely quiet. Finnuala had almost drifted off to sleep when the cell door did
finally open.

“About bloody time,” she said. The rest of the invective died in her throat.

A huge mummy shuffled laboriously into the cell, its bandages a dusty brown, with lime-green pustulant fluids weeping from
its hands. It was wearing Neville Latham’s immaculate peaked cap. “So sorry to keep you waiting,” it apologized gruffly.

•  •  •

Colonel Palmer’s field command officers informed Ralph’s reconnaissance team about the woman as they were about to enter Exnall.
Datavise bandwidth was being suppressed by the now-familiar electronic warfare field, preventing anything other than basic
conversation. They certainly couldn’t receive a full sensevise, or even a visual image, so they had to rely on a simple description
instead.

As far as the SD sensor satellites could tell, the town’s entire population had retreated back into the buildings. Earlier
on there had been a considerable amount of movement under the umbrella of harandrids, blurred infrared smears skipping about
erratically. Then as dawn rose even those beguiling traces vanished. The only things left moving in Exnall were the treetops
swaying back and forth in the first morning zephyr. Roofs, and even entire streets, appeared blurred, as if a gentle rain
was pattering on the satellite’s lenses. Visually, the town was a complete hash, except for a solitary circle, fifteen metres
across, in front of a diner which served the link road to the M6. And in the middle of that was the woman.

“She’s just standing there,” Janne Palmer datavised. “She’ll be able to see anything approaching up the link road into town.”

“Any weapons apparent?” Ralph asked. Along with the twelve-strong platoon the colonel had assigned him, he was crouched down
at the side of the road, a hundred metres short of the first houses. They were using a small embankment for cover as they
crept in towards the town.

His head was ringing with a mental version of tinnitus, which he suspected was due to the stimulants. After only two hours
sleep in the last thirty-six he was having to use both chemical and software excitants to keep his edge. But he couldn’t afford
to relax his guard, not now.

“Definitely not,” Janne Palmer told him. “At least not any heavy-calibre hardware, anyway. She’s wearing a jacket, so she
could be concealing a small pistol inside it.”

“Not that it makes any difference if she’s possessed. We’ve not seen them use a weapon yet.”

“Quite.”

“Dumb question, but is she alive?”

“Yes. We can see her chest moving when she breathes, and her infrared signature is optimum.”

“She’s some kind of bait, do you think?”

“No, too obvious. I’d guess some kind of sentry, except they must know we’re here. Several squads have skirmished while we
were setting up the perimeter.”

“Hell, you mean they’re loose in the woods?”

“ ’Fraid so. Which means I can’t confirm that all the possessed are inside the cordon. I’ve requested some more troops from
Admiral Farquar to start searching the locality. The request is up before the security committee as we speak.”

Ralph cursed silently. Possessed roaming around in this area would be nigh on impossible to track down. The Mortonridge countryside
was a rugged nightmare. Pity we haven’t got any affinity-bonded hounds, he thought. The ones he’d seen the settlement supervisors
use back on Lalonde would have been perfect for the job. And I can just see Jannike Dermot’s face if I make that suggestion
to the security committee. But… hell, they’re what we need.

“Ralph, one moment please,” Colonel Palmer datavised. “We’ve run an ident check on our lady sentry. It’s confirmed, she’s
Angeline Gallagher.”

“Hell. That changes everything.”

“Yes. Opinion here is that she’s wanting to talk. She’s not stupid. Allowing herself to be seen like this must be their equivalent
of a white flag.”

“I expect you’re right.” Ralph gave the platoon’s lieutenant an order to halt their advance while the security committee came
on line. The marines formed themselves into a defensive circle, scanning the trees and the nearby houses with their most basic
sensors. Ralph let his automatic rifle hang at his side as he squatted in the middle of some thick marloop bushes. He had
a terrible intimation that Gallagher (or rather her possessor) wasn’t about to lay out some convenient terms of surrender.
There never can be surrender between us, he acknowledged gloomily.

So what could she want to say?

“Mr Hiltch, we concur with Colonel Palmer that the woman wants to negotiate,” Princess Kirsten datavised. “I know it’s a lot
to ask after all you’ve been through, but I’d like you to go in there and talk to her.”

“We can set up SD ground-strike coverage to support you,” Deborah Unwin datavised. “Put you in the eye of a hurricane, so
to speak. Any tricks or attempts to overwhelm you, and we’ll laser out a two-hundred-metre circle with you at the centre.
We know they can’t withstand the SD platform’s power levels.”

“It’s all right,” Ralph told his invisible audience. “I’ll go in. After all, I was the one who brought her here.”

•  •  •

Strangely enough, Ralph didn’t think of very much at all when he was walking the last five hundred metres along the road.
All he wanted to do now was get the job over. The road which had started at the mouth of a titanic river on a different, distant
planet finished inside a pretty rural town on the rump of nowhere. If there was an irony to be had in those circumstances,
Ralph couldn’t taste it.

Angeline Gallagher’s possessor waited calmly outside the cheap single-storey diner as he walked towards her. Dean, Will, and
Cathal accompanied him for most of the way; then when they were still a hundred metres away from her he told them to wait
and carried on alone. Nothing moved in any of the simple, elegant buildings which lined the link road. But he knew they were
waiting behind the walls and blanked windows. The conviction grew inside him that they weren’t showing themselves because
it wasn’t yet their time to do so. Their part in the drama would come later.

This was a surety he’d never known before, a kind of psychic upswelling. And with it his intimation of disaster grew ever
stronger.

The closer he got to the woman, the less the electronic warfare field affected his implants and suit blocks. By the time he
was five metres away, the security committee was receiving a full sensevise again. He stopped. Squared his shoulders. Took
off his shell helmet.

Her smile was almost pitying in its sparsity. “Looks like we’ve arrived at the crunch time,” she said.

“Who are you?”

“Annette Ekelund. And you are Ralph Hiltch, the ESA’s head of station on Lalonde. I might have known you would be the one
they set on us. You’ve done quite a good job so far.”

“Could we cut the bullshit? What do you want?”

“Philosophically, to live for ever. Practically, I want you to call off the police and marines you’ve got circling this town
along with the other three we’ve managed to occupy. Right now.”

“No.”

“I see you’ve already learned not to make threats. No
or else
. No
if you don’t you’ll regret it
. That’s good. After all, what can you threaten me with?”

“Zero-tau.”

Annette Ekelund frowned as she considered the response. “Yes. Possibly. It is, I admit, certainly frightening enough for us.
But there’s no finality to that, not anymore. If we flee our possessed bodies to escape zero-tau, we can still return. There
are already several million possessed walking upon the Confederation worlds. Within weeks, that number will be hundreds of
millions, a few days later billions. I will always have a way back now. As long as a single human body is left alive my kind
can resurrect me. Do you understand now?”

“I understand the zero-tau option works. We will put you in the pods; and we will keep putting you in the pods until there
are no more of you left. Do you understand that?”

“I’m sorry, Ralph, but as I said, you simply cannot threaten me. Have you worked out why yet? Have you worked out the real
reason I will win? It is because you will ultimately join me. You are going to die, Ralph. Today. Tomorrow. A year from now.
If you’re lucky, in fifty years time. It doesn’t matter when. It is entropy, it is fate, it is the way the universe works.
Death, not love, conquers all in the end. And when you die, you will find yourself in the beyond. That is when you and I will
become brother and sister in the same fellowship. United against the living. Coveting the living.” “No.”

“Do not speak about something you know nothing about.”

“I still do not believe you. God is not that cruel. There will be more to death than this emptiness you found.”

She laughed bitterly. “Fool. Know-nothing fool.”

“But a living fool. A fool you have to contend with here and now.”

“There is no such thing as God, Ralph. Only humans are stupid enough to create religions. Have you noticed that? None of the
xenocs we’ve encountered need to bandage their insecurities and fears with promises of incorporeal glory that are every soul’s
due. Oh, no, Ralph; God is merely the term an ignorant primitive uses when he wants to say quantum cosmology. The universe
is an entirely natural structure, one which is exceptionally vicious in its attitude to life. And now we have an opportunity
to leave it for good, a chance of salvation. We’re not going to let you stop us, Ralph.”

“I can, and I will.”

“Sorry, Ralph, but your intransigent belief in humanity is your principal weakness, one which you share with the rest of this
Kingdom’s devout population. We intend to exploit that to the full. What I’m about to say might seem inhuman, but then, that’s
what you think I am anyway. As I told you, the dead cannot lose this fight, for you have no lever on us. We cannot be threatened,
coerced, nor pleaded with. Like death itself, we are an absolute.”