‘Good,’ Nero replied with a nod. ‘I shall be with you in a moment.’
Nero walked over to the staircase that led up from the hangar deck and turned towards the assembled Alphas.
‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ Nero said, ‘you are about to take part in one of the most challenging exercises that you will face in your time at H.I.V.E. You will have heard the rumours and the legends but none of them can quite prepare you for what lies ahead. I could offer you advice to better prepare you but it is more important for me to see how you as individuals react to this test. You are Alphas – I expect the best from you. I know you will not disappoint me.’
He nodded to the security guards around the room and they began to guide the students to their designated transports.
‘I think you probably know which group I would like you to keep a particular eye on,’ Nero said as Raven walked over to him, slinging her pack over her shoulder.
‘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.
Raven watched through the cockpit window as the other Shrouds transporting Alpha students uncloaked and touched down at the Hunt base camp beneath them.
‘Take us down,’ Raven said to the pilot.
‘I’ve got an urgent message from H.I.V.E.,’ the co-pilot said suddenly.
‘Put it on speaker,’ Raven said quickly.
‘Raven, this is Nero, get out . . .’
The message dissolved into nothing but static.
‘What’s wrong?’ Raven demanded.
‘Something’s jamming the comms signal,’ the co-pilot replied.
Raven immediately hit the switch that would connect her to the other Shrouds.
‘This is Raven to all transports, abort, abort, abort! Site is compromised, repeat, site is compromised.’
‘Incoming!’ the pilot yelled and Raven grabbed for a nearby handhold as he banked the Shroud sharply, jamming the throttle up to full power. There was an enormous bang as something struck one of the Shroud’s engines and the cockpit was filled with the blaring sounds of automated warnings.
On the ground below, a volley of missiles streaked into the Shrouds that had already landed, and they disappeared beneath a blossoming cloud of fire and black smoke.
‘Get us out of here,’ Raven yelled at the pilot.
‘I’m doing my best,’ the pilot shouted as he fought with the controls, sending the wounded Shroud diving into the valley below. He jabbed at another button on the control console and turned to Raven, his face dark. ‘We’ve lost the cloak.’
‘I’ve got two faint radar contacts,’ the co-pilot reported. ‘One’s coming after us.’
‘I’m going below to check on the students,’ Raven snapped. She slid down the ladder to the passenger compartment. The bay was already filling with acrid, black smoke.
‘Is anyone injured?’ Raven yelled above the screech of the Shroud’s one remaining engine.
‘No, we’re OK,’ Otto shouted back. ‘What’s happening?’
‘We’re under attack,’ Raven shouted. ‘We may have to ditch. If we make it down in one piece, trigger the emergency hatch release and get out of here as quickly as possible. Understood?’
Raven turned and headed back towards the cockpit. Suddenly there was an explosion of debris as heavy cannon fire blew holes in the fuselage. The Shroud lurched drunkenly and Raven leapt for the cockpit ladder, dragging herself up it as the whole compartment began to tip. She pulled herself into the cockpit only to find a scene of carnage. Both the pilot and co-pilot were dead, the wind howling through the shattered remains of the cockpit canopy that had been shredded by the enemy cannon fire. Raven dragged the pilot’s body out of the flight-seat and pulled hard on the control yoke. The Shroud’s single turbine screamed in protest as she levelled the Shroud out just a few metres above the valley floor. A wasp-like helicopter gunship covered in angular black panels drew alongside the Shroud’s cockpit thirty metres to Raven’s right. The heavy cannon mounted beneath its chin rotated towards her as Raven pulled back hard on the controls. The lethal torrent of tracer shells passed just below the Shroud with an explosive roar. Raven banked hard, trying to get out of the gunship’s line of fire. She jammed on the airbrakes and rotated the engine into a landing position as the gunship shot past beneath her. It began to bank, turning back towards them as Raven brought the stricken Shroud lurching down towards the ground. There was a bang as the undercarriage crunched down on to the rocky valley floor.
‘Get out, now!’ Raven yelled down to the passenger compartment as the enemy gunship began another attack run.
Otto leapt out of his seat and slapped his palm down on the emergency hatch release. The explosive bolts on the hatch fired instantly and the whole ramp flew away from the back of the Shroud, bouncing away across the ground.
‘GO!’ Otto shouted and the Alphas dashed out of the hatch and scattered across the rough terrain outside. Otto ran as fast as he could towards the cover of some nearby pine trees. He glanced over his shoulder just in time to see a pair of missiles streak from the underside of the helicopter gunship and strike the downed Shroud. The Shroud vanished in an incandescent ball of fire, the shock wave from the explosion knocking Otto flat on his face. The helicopter moved slowly along the valley towards the blazing wreckage.
‘Get into the trees!’ Otto yelled to the others who were running for cover as fast as they could. He knew that it probably wouldn’t do much good but any cover from the gunship’s weapons was better than none at all.
‘Laura! Get down!’ Shelby screamed, sprinting towards her friend as the gunship rotated towards them. She slammed into Laura and pushed her down behind a large boulder as the helicopter’s chin cannon opened fire. The fire tore up the ground all around them, the air filling with choking clouds of dirt and stinging stone chips.
Otto knew what he had to do. Shelby and Laura only had a few seconds before the gunship moved into a position which would leave them with no cover at all. He had to act now. He ran towards the gunship, praying that he was close enough. He closed his eyes and reached out with his abilities, straining to connect with the sophisticated computers that controlled the helicopter’s flight control systems. He could feel nothing: it was as if the computers on-board the helicopter simply didn’t exist. They had to be using some sort of shielding that was stopping him from accessing them. The gunship started to turn towards Otto and he realised that there was no way that he could get to cover before it opened fire. Suddenly a thought raced through his head. They might have taken the precaution of shielding the gunship’s systems against his abilities but perhaps they’d not shielded everything. He reached out again with his senses and found what he was looking for. They were unshielded, just as he had hoped. The gunner inside the helicopter brought the cannon to bear, his cross hairs centred on the white-haired boy standing out in the open. He watched as the boy pointed a hand at the gunship, his forefingers extended as if to make a child’s imaginary pistol.
‘Bang,’ Otto said
as he simultaneously triggered the detonators in all of the helicopter’s remaining missiles.
The gunship disappeared in a ball of fire, debris bouncing across the valley floor. Otto dived to the ground, his hands over his head, as huge chunks of burning metal flew past him. After a few seconds he looked up and slowly climbed to his feet. Pieces of tangled metal lay everywhere – it was a scene of total devastation.
‘Otto!’ Wing shouted, running towards his friend. ‘Are you OK?’
‘Yeah, I’m fine,’ Otto said, dusting himself off. ‘Did everyone make it out?’
‘Not everyone, I fear,’ Wing said, looking towards the smouldering wreckage of the Shroud. There was no sign of Raven.
‘Then we’re on our own,’ Otto said grimly, trying to ignore the churning feeling in his gut. ‘We have to get moving. There’s no way we can go back to the original landing site. Whoever ambushed us is sure to be waiting there and we can’t stay here either. The people this helicopter belonged to are bound to come looking.’
‘Agreed,’ Wing replied. ‘Do you still have the map?’
‘Yes,’ Otto said as he reached inside his insulated bodysuit and pulled out a folded piece of paper. ‘Let’s gather everyone up and we can make a decision on our next move.’
Slowly the Alphas gathered under the trees. They all looked shocked by the events that had just unfolded.
‘What do we do now?’ Nigel asked.
‘We have to get away from here,’ Otto said, smoothing out the map on the ground. ‘Our best bet is to head this way through the forest and towards the mountains here.’ He pointed at the map. ‘They probably have other helicopters and we have to assume that they’ll also have forces on the ground. We can’t go back to the landing site, it’s obviously been compromised, so we keep moving through the best natural cover we can find and hope that H.I.V.E. come looking for us.’
‘Wouldn’t it make sense to try and head for the nearest settlement and see if we can find some way to contact H.I.V.E. directly?’ Tom asked.
‘The nearest town is over two hundred miles away,’ Laura said, shaking her head, ‘and that’s exactly where they’ll expect us to head. I think Otto’s right – the mountains will give us better cover and more places to hide if they are searching for us from the air.’