Trask looked this way and that and licked his lips. “And is that it? You’re not going to listen to—?” He was about to say “reason.” But:
“—That’s it!” Captain McKenzie cut in. “On my next signal she takes off—with or without you. There are extra NBC suits aboard. I’d advise you to put them on, even if you don’t get to set foot on the Evening Star.”
“What?” said Trask. “What did you say? Even if we don’t get to set foot on…? Hell’s teeth! We’re the only people who know what’s going on here, and you—”
Jake Cutter took his elbow. “Er, Mr. Trask? Sir? The Captain is right. We’re fortunate that we have the opportunity to watch the operation from beginning to end. I’m sure that will suffice for our, er, Minister Responsible? And now we really should get aboard, right?” His grip on Trask’s arm was like iron.
Trask looked at Jake, and as the downdraft from the chopper built up he turned to the telepath Liz Merrick. Half shrugging, she leaned forward and whispered, “You’d be making a mistake to think McKenzie’s bluffing. For just a moment back there, he was even thinking to throw you in the brig! A passing thought, yes, but if we’re going it has to be now.”
Trask stamped for the big chopper’s ramp, but as the others got aboard he turned and shouted, “Captain McKenzie, these men, these marines…they’re not my responsibility.”
“Of course they’re not!” the Captain shouted back.
And Trask nodded. “Just you remember that,” he said, before climbing aboard.
A marine with a Warrant Officer Class 2’s insignia on the wrist of his NBC suit told Trask, “Sir, it will take you maybe ten to fifteen minutes to get into one of these suits. And we’re only fifteen minutes to target.”
“Target?” said Trask, whose thoughts were elsewhere.
“Our destination,” the other shrugged. He had pulled aside his headgear and gas mask in order to talk. Most of his men had done likewise for easy breathing en route to the Star.
Trask was still feeling sour but the mood was quickly falling off him. For after all, it wasn’t these people’s fault that they were caught up in this. They were just following orders—however stupid those orders might appear to be. Also, from what Trask had been told, he knew he couldn’t blame the Minister Responsible, either. And it was easy to see what had happened here: the minister didn’t have carte blanche in this thing; since HMS Invincible was involved, he’d had to work through the Fleet Air Arm and the Admiralty both. So, what would he have been able to tell them: that E-Branch had priority here, and they were going up against vampires? Not likely! Which meant that it all boiled down to a military (or more properly naval) operation.
To these six men, however, it wouldn’t seem like a military mission at all; they were simply doing their bit to help out in an emergency situation, giving aid to the civilian authorities. And on second thought maybe Trask should blame the Minister Responsible after all. For he had governmental power, the power to swear both the Admiralty and the Fleet Air Arm to secrecy…if he’d had the balls to use it. Or maybe it was the case that too many people were already in the know. And then again maybe something had changed—changed drastically—since Trask and his people had been sent out here.
But what or whichever, it was a fucking mess! These six men thought they knew what they were doing, thought it was going to be easy. They’d been tasked to knock down some kind of unarmed, rabid civilian animal and take him to a vet to have him checked out…just like that.
But it wasn’t just like that at all…
“You and these men,” Trask suddenly blurted it out, “you’re all in grave danger! You aren’t in possession of all the facts. Your superiors don’t know all the facts. Only set foot on that ship without knowing what you’re doing, and—”
“—Oh, we know what we’re doing, sir,” the Warrant Officer cut him short. “Our orders were very simple.”
Jesus! thought Trask. Simple? So were the minds that issued them! And out loud: “Listen to me. I’m telling you that some of you might not be coming back from that vessel!”
The WO narrowed his eyes. “And I’m telling you that that’s what we call spreading alarm and despondency among the troops. If you were one of mine, you’d be on a charge. And in any case I’m obliged to report what you just said.”
“But—”
“Just ten minutes to target.” The WO turned away, and then turned back again. “And if you’re not in a bloody suit when we get there, I’ll be confining you to this chopper—sir!”
Trask barely managed to keep from exploding. “We have our own ‘bloody suits,’” he said, “which aren’t nearly as complicated as yours.” And to his own people: “Spray yourselves down, apply nose-plugs, and weapon up. Liz—I want you on guard from touchdown. We all stay together as far as possible, and always within sight and easy reach of Jake.”
All twelve passengers—marines and E-Branch people alike—were standing, belted, hooked up to safety rings in the ceiling of the aircraft; a purely precautionary and standard safety measure, for except from a little vibration the ride so far had been as smooth as silk. It would be relatively simple for Trask and his people to unhook themselves and suit-up in NBC gear.
Instead, Ian Goodly and David Chung took out small aerosol canisters and commenced spraying down their fellows. As the gas spread out the marines wrinkled their noses, backed off, began sliding away on their safety rings and pulling their gas masks into position over their mouths and noses.
“Shit!” one of them said, disgustedly.
“No,” Liz told him. “It’s just garlic. You don’t need your gas masks…not yet, anyway.”
And as Goodly and Chung finished their spraying: “We never use anything else,” said Trask. “That’s us all ‘suited up.’”
“That’s a shame,” said a marine junior ranker. “See, I was sort of looking forward to helping the little lady on with her suit. Helping her get dressed, I mean.”
“Or undressed!” Another marine sniggered.
“Watch your dirty mouths!” their WO told them. But:
“It’s okay,” Liz smiled at him however tightly, and turned to the one who would have liked to help her dress, or undress. “I feel perfectly safe with the soldier boys here—especially this one. You see, he has to come on all sexy because he isn’t. Oh, he has the gear all right, swinging away down there, but in fact that’s all it does. He’s so worried that his wife is probably being banged by the big policeman who lives next door back home in Portsmouth, that he just can’t get it up. But still he likes to pretend he can.” And smiling sweetly at the marine in question—who stood swaying there with his bottom jaw hanging loose and his eyes bugging—she added, “So what does that do for your privates, Private?”
Now the man leaned towards her. “Private?” he said. “What? Private soldier? So what do you know? In the marines it’s just ‘marine,’ sweetheart!” But with his colleagues staring at him, he quickly realized that while he had corrected her error he’d said nothing to address the insult! So…could she in fact be right? “Why, you bitch!” he spat then, going white and yanking on his tether to get closer to her. But Jake Cutter, hooked up opposite him, quickly got in the way.
“Later,” Jake husked, showing his teeth. “We’ll talk about this later, you and me, when we’re back on Invincible.”
“My pleasure!” the other spat.
“I very much doubt that,” said Jake. “But it will certainly be mine.”
“Knock it off, everybody!” the WO snapped. “Five minutes to target.”
And in Jake’s head: Back on Invincible? Korath-once-Mindsthrall’s deadspeak voice echoed his astonishment, his disgust. This one insulted your woman, accepted your challenge, and yet he’s still standing? Your reaction should have been immediate, instinctive, final! By now he should be writhing on the floor, choking on his own blood! Sometimes you disappoint me, Jake.
I’m not here for your pleasure, Jake told him. And anyway, this isn’t St
arside. Also, and if you’d been paying attention, it might have dawned on you that these people will be lucky to get back to Invincible in the first place.
Ah! said Korath. Now that’s more like it. You have let him live knowing that he faces a far worse death on a ship full of vampires!
Oh, for Christ’s sake! Jake sighed. And not wanting to get into a full-blown argument or Wamphyri word game with his dead “familiar,” he added: Yes, sure, whatever you say.
Then he glanced sideways at Liz.
Sorry, she’d sensed his probe, no longer deadspeak but telepathy, the rapport they had between them. It’s just nerves, I suppose. It doesn’t take too much to set them jumping. I think I’ll probably always be like this when we…when we’re going up against Them. Then she shrugged and added, Despite that what I said about this poor jerk is true, still it was cruel of me.
Forget it, Jake answered. And anyway, my nerves are jumping just as badly. And maybe I’m just as cruel. I mean, for a while there I was actually enjoying the idea that this marine fuck is on his way into hell! And the fact is, he may well be.
But not us?
Again he glanced at her. Yes, probably us, too. But at least we know what we’re doing. We know what’s waiting for us…
7
Collecting the Specimen
THEY FELT THE SUDDEN DECELERATION, SENSED their gradual descent towards the Evening Star. The WO was listening to the pilot on his headset; in answer to information received he said, “Roger that,” slapped a magazine into the housing on his rifle, and spoke to his team. “Remember, ladies: these weapons are for show. The infected people on this ship may be loonies but still they’ll know what rifles are. And what the hell, the way you’re dressed will most likely scare the shit out of them before they even notice your rifles! So then, you may fire warning shots if neccessary, but only if it becomes neccessary.”
“Oh, it will!” Trask murmured under his breath, then spoke out loud to his agents: “People, if your weapons aren’t already loaded, do it now.”
“That won’t be neccessary,” the WO spoke up. “You can belay that last. I told you to suit up, and you didn’t. Therefore you aren’t going anywhere.”
Trask shook his head. “You can’t confine us, can’t order us around. We’re not military personnel, we’re civilians and don’t come under your jurisdiction. You don’t have the power to—”
“Williams,” the WO cut him off, and the man Liz had taunted stopped glaring at Jake and came to attention.
“Yes, sir?”
“You’re on rearguard,” said the WO. “Stay back, and keep an eye on this lot. Make sure that they and the pilot stay safe.”
“Yes, sir!” Williams snapped, and armed his rifle.
“Sergeant Major,” Trask grabbed the WO’s arm, made one last desperate effort to get through to him. “Those NBC suits aren’t any use in this situation. I mean, they’re tar paper, for God’s sake! They can only slow you down. And as for the men and women on that ship—”
(The chopper touched down and the whine of its rotors began to reduce in pitch.) “—on this ship,” Trask went on, “they’re not mad. This isn’t like rabies or any other disease we’ve ever come across. These people won’t just attack you—they’ll fucking eat you!”
The WO shook himself loose, scowled one last time at Trask, then ordered his men out onto the Star’s deck.
As the door slid open, the pneumatic boarding ramp reached out and down, locked into position, and the marines disembarked. Williams stayed on board, guarding the door and looking at Jake, Trask, and the rest of the E-Branch personnel with a narrow-eyed expression that said, “Just you try something.”
The Sea King had landed on the sun deck midway between the two swimming pools. The sun was gone, dusk coming in fast, and the shadow of the island’s central fang had draped itself like a shroud over the ship.
“Mr. Beamish, sir,” the WO’s voice shouted over the throb of rotors on standby. “The stranded chopper’s up front on the main deck. She’s all yours. We’ll see you back on Invincible.”
“Christ!” Trask shouted, and tried to shoulder his way past Williams at the door. “Don’t let him—”
But Williams planted the butt of his rifle in Trask’s stomach and cut him short. “Ugh!” said Trask, doubling up. And when he spoke again his words were a gasp: “Don’t let him…let him go alone!” Too late, for the marines had already dispersed; the WO and one other towards the starboard stairwells, two others to port, and Lieutenant Beamish crouching low where he skirted the main pool, running along the shadowy open deck toward the prow.
And as Jake unclipped himself, cursed and made to grab hold of Williams, the marine stuck the muzzle of his weapon into his gut, took first pressure on the trigger, and said, “Don’t tempt me. Don’t even think about it!” His eyes had gone very wide and a nervous tic jerked his pale face in the oval frame of his NBC headgear. “Don’t give me any reason at all to pull this trigger—because I just might, fuck-head!”
And looking inside Williams’s mind, Liz saw what she’d previously missed: that impotence wasn’t his only problem. He was a coward, too, scared shitless. And his trigger-finger was trembling like a leaf in a gale!
WO2 Bently switched on the miniature camera situated centrally between the lenses of his nite-lites. As yet the thermal-imaging nite-lites were simply goggles, attachments for the gas mask that protected his mouth and nose, but he need only trip a tiny switch to see in infrared. Lacking a lighting system, the Evening Star would be dark below decks, getting darker as the gloom of twilight deepened. And now that Bently and his men were aboard the Star, they had also switched on interunit communications; not only could they speak to each other, but their conversations would be heard aboard Invincible. Similarly, anything the WO saw would also be seen by Captain McKenzie.
“Get below,” Bently told his people now. “One flight down, and we meet up on the bridge deck. Any contact, which is to say on first contact, waste no time but dart the target and report, then get him or her back up topside to the Sea King. That’s all we’re here for. Clear?”
“Roger that,” the answer came back from the marines on the larboard stairwell.
Then the sounds of boots clattering on the stairs, and:
“Switch your nite-lites on now,” said Bently, as his teams joined forces again between the bridge-deck landings. Then, speaking into his headset: “Lieutenant Beamish, sitrep.” Normally Beamish would be his superior, but in the current situation Bently had command while the officer was just another man, a pilot whose only task was to rescue the stranded chopper.
“Y-yes, Sergeant-Major?” came the shaky reply. But shaky?
“Is there a problem?” Bently snapped. “I want a sitrep!”
“I…I thought I saw some movement up ahead of me,” Beamish answered. “Weird, flowing motion, where the exterior stairs go down to the forward sun deck. The light is bad and the decks are still warm—their heat is interfering with the nite-lites and blurring my vision. Probably better if I rely on my natural eyesight. I’m switching the nite-lites off now and approaching the stairs. And…”
Bently waited a moment and repeated him, “And?”
“And there’s…there’s no one here,” came the reply, and what sounded like a broken sigh of relief.
“Can you see the chopper?” Bently also sighed, but managed to keep it to himself.
“Yes. The shadow of the upper deck is falling right across her, but…but I don’t think there’s anyone there.”
“When you get down there,” said Bently, “a couple of warning shots into the air should clear the way—that is, should you need to clear the way.”
“Understood,” said Lieutenant Beamish.
Bently looked at his men: like molten red and blue ghosts, wavering in his nite-lites. “Okay,” he said. “There are no passenger accommodations on this deck, so we’ll split up again and go down one flight to the next landing. You popgun people, make sure you’re read
y with your darts. Somewhere on this damn great spook of a ship there are supposed to be a couple of thousand people…that is unless they’ve all jumped overboard! So let’s find just one of them and then get the fuck out of here!”
In the ghostly subdued fluorescent lighting of HMS Invincible’s Ops Room, Captain McKenzie and two of his officers were following Bently’s progress on a wall screen and listening to sitreps and conversations as they came in. Radio procedure had gone out the window, but the Captain wasn’t worried. With only a handful of marines involved, all of them well known to his fellows, the SOPs would only have slowed communications down. Captain McKenzie could also speak to Bently if he so desired, but so far he hadn’t deemed it necessary.
The thermal imaging of Bently’s camera displayed the wooden panelling on the walls of the stairwell as a softly fluctuating peripheral neon glow, gradually brightening as he descended and left what little natural light there’d been on the bridge deck behind.
Then, as Bently reached the promenade deck and the picture on the screen stopped jerking with his motion, the voice of one of his portside men came up loud and clear:
“Sir, there’s debris in the larboard stairwell. It’s almost choked. Wooden lockers or dressers torn out of the ship’s bunks by the looks of it. And there are bodies. We can see…we see a great many dead bodies. No, wait! One of them’s alive. It’s a woman. She’s in a bad way, trying to stand up, asking for help. No need to dart this one. She’s all done in.”
“Stay there!” (Bently’s voice.) “We’re between the landings below you. We’ll cross over to your side and come up.”
“Roger that,” came the answer, as the picture on the screen jerked into motion again and the narrow walls of softly glowing neon began to flow by, but more rapidly now.
And then Lieutenant Beamish’s voice, or rather his stuttering, choking, terrified shriek: “God Almighty! Oh, sweet Jesus! Yahh! Yahhhh! Yaahhhhh!” Followed by four rapid-fire shots, and a new, hitherto unknown, triumphantly guttural voice saying: