Earthfall: Retribution (17 page)

‘There,’ Mag said, pointing to the dark mouth of a tunnel leading further into the gloom.

‘We have no idea what’s down there,’ Jay said looking into the black hole apprehensively as they walked closer.

‘Don’t think we’ve got much of a choice,’ Mag said, the sound of the drop-ship growing louder.

‘Here goes nothing,’ Jay said, slinging his rifle across his back and slowly lowering himself into the hole, feeling for hand and footholds in the gently sloping tunnel. Mag followed him down. Even her enhanced senses could make out nothing in the darkness, just a faint odour of ozone floating in the air. Shaw ducked inside just as the drop-ship floated past overhead, more slowly this time, beams of light playing over the tangled smouldering wreckage of the Chinook.

After a couple of minutes Jay switched on the torch attached to his combat harness, lighting up the tunnel leading off into the darkness ahead. They continued along it for fifteen minutes until a glimmer of blue lit the way ahead. Jay turned off his torch, creeping slowly forward with his weapon raised. As he rounded the bend, he found himself looking down into a cavernous room filled from the floor to the ceiling with columns of Voidborn Hunters, the silvery Drones suspended in shafts of bright blue light. The part of Jay that had spent so long fighting them while trying to survive on the occupied streets of London couldn’t help but feel a twinge of nervousness at seeing so many of them in one place.

‘They look dormant,’ Shaw said as he came up alongside Jay and Mag.

‘Given the reception we just got from that drop-ship, I think that’s probably a very good thing,’ Jay said. ‘We have to assume we’ve lost control of the Mothership.’

‘What I’d like to know is how you managed to take control of it in the first place,’ Shaw said, staring up at the thousands of Hunters that surrounded them.

‘Well, maybe if we can get our people out of here you’ll be able to ask them for yourself,’ Jay said. ‘Until then you’re still in the “don’t really know, don’t really trust” category.’

‘I can understand why you feel that way,’ Shaw said, ‘but we’re going to have to work together if we’re going to stop Mason.’

‘What’s he going to do?’ Mag asked.

‘We isolated the location of the primary transmission node for the Voidborn control network,’ Shaw said. ‘I think he’s planning to use this Mothership to destroy it.’

‘And leave all the Sleepers brain dead in the process,’ Jay said, thinking of the Sleepers who’d been severed from the Voidborn control signal in London with such disastrous consequences.

‘Indeed,’ Shaw said. ‘He has to be stopped.’

‘Why would he do that?’ Mag said, shaking her head.

‘He lost everything to the Voidborn,’ Shaw replied. ‘I thought I’d seen the limits of how far he was prepared to go, but now . . .’

‘Yeah, releasing the Vore in London,’ Jay said as they walked between the glowing columns of floating Hunters. ‘What on earth was he thinking?’

‘And why did his men follow his orders?’ Mag said. ‘I know that they’re soldiers but . . .’

‘They don’t have a choice,’ Shaw said. ‘The devices attached to their skulls don’t block the Voidborn control signal – they intercept and subtly alter it so that the soldiers are under his control instead. They’re no more responsible for their actions than the rest of the Sleepers.’

‘You seem to know an awful lot about it,’ Jay said with a slight frown.

‘I should do,’ Shaw replied. ‘I designed the control devices.’

‘Why would you do that?’ Mag asked, sounding surprised. ‘Why give someone like that his own private army?’

‘I didn’t realise at the time how dangerous he was becoming,’ Shaw replied. ‘It was only later when –’

Jay suddenly held his hand up as a Hunter floated out of one of the columns of light just ahead of them, slowly rotating as the segmented metallic tentacles dangling beneath its body twitched and writhed. The Hunter turned towards them and advanced. Jay raised his rifle, his finger curling inside the trigger guard.

‘Wait,’ Shaw said, watching the Hunter carefully. The Voidborn creature drifted towards them and then went straight past as they parted to make way for it, eventually floating away down the tunnel from which they had just come.

‘That was risky,’ Jay said, lowering his rifle as the Hunter disappeared from view.

‘Not really,’ Shaw said. ‘I’ve spent long enough studying those things to know that if they’re going to attack they’ll do so without any hesitation whatsoever. That one didn’t even seem to notice we were here.’

‘Can we get out of here?’ Mag asked. ‘These things give me the creeps. The only ones I ever saw in Edinburgh were already dead, ripped to pieces by the Vore. Think I prefer them that way, to be honest.’

‘Yeah, I know what you mean,’ Jay said. They had no idea how long the Hunter’s apparent lack of interest in them would last. ‘So how are we going to find the others?’

‘Simple,’ Mag said, sniffing the air with a slight smile, ‘just follow my nose.’

8

Rachel sat in the windowless room with Sam’s head resting in her lap. His eyes slowly opened and he raised his hand to his forehead with a wince.

‘Ow,’ he said. ‘What happened?’

‘Whatever that Talon creature did to you knocked you out cold,’ Rachel said as Sam gingerly sat up, rubbing his temples.

‘We’ve been locked in here ever since,’ Stirling said, gesturing at the bare, black walls that surrounded them, the only light coming from a dimly glowing panel in the ceiling.

‘Don’t suppose either of you have any paracetamol,’ Sam said.

‘’Fraid not,’ Rachel replied with a crooked smile.

‘I think we’re moving,’ Sam said. He could feel the rumble of the Mothership’s massive anti-gravity engines through the soles of his feet. The last time he’d felt that was when the Servant had first appeared and saved the Mothership from dropping on to central London.

‘It would appear so,’ Stirling said with a frown, ‘though we have no idea where we’re going or why.’

‘There’s something you need to know,’ Rachel said, her expression suddenly serious. ‘Mason released the Vore in London.’

‘But he said that . . .’

‘I know,’ Rachel said with a sigh. ‘He did it anyway.’

‘Oh my God,’ Sam said, struggling to absorb the enormity of what Rachel had just told him. ‘The others, we have to . . .’ He trailed off. He’d seen what had happened in Edinburgh. There would be nothing they could do. London was lost and, in all likelihood, so were the lives of his friends. ‘I’m going to kill him.’

‘It may not be quite as straightforward as that, I’m afraid,’ Stirling replied. ‘You saw his true face. I have no idea how long the man I knew as Mason has actually been this Talon creature. He clearly has access to technology far beyond our understanding; the ability to change his appearance at will is probably just a fraction of his true power. He claimed to be the last of the Illuminate and I strongly suspect that they must have been the original builders of the Motherships. If he understands the technology on board this vessel properly, and has the experience necessary to use it properly, he may prove almost impossible to stop.’

‘We have to try,’ Rachel said. ‘If he’s prepared to release those monsters in London, God only knows what he’ll do with the Mothership.’

‘Well, we can’t do much about it from in here,’ Sam said, looking over at the firmly sealed door at the other end of the room. He could still sense the Mothership around him, just as he had been able to since his first encounter with the Voidborn consciousness, but his direct connection to it was severed. ‘Where’s the Servant?’

‘She’s gone,’ Stirling said. ‘Talon deactivated her nanite swarm.’

‘So we’re stuck here,’ Sam said, still trying to ignore the pain in his head.

‘I rather fear we are,’ Stirling replied.

Sam sat staring at the floor for a couple of minutes, trying to make sense of what was happening.

‘It’s not your fault, you know,’ Rachel said.

‘I should never have given up control of the Mothership. It didn’t save anyone anyway,’ Sam said.

‘You couldn’t have known that at the time,’ Rachel replied, shaking her head. ‘None of us knew –’

She was interrupted as the door at the other end of the room hissed open to reveal one of Talon’s soldiers.

‘You,’ the soldier said, pointing at Sam, ‘come with me.’

‘Where are you taking him?’ Rachel said, standing up. The soldier raised his rifle and Sam put his hand on Rachel’s arm.

‘It’s OK, Rachel,’ Sam said. ‘I’ll be fine – don’t worry.’

Sam raised his hands when the soldier motioned with his gun for him to step outside. As he passed the man, he felt the same odd scratching noise inside his skull that he’d felt when he’d first been near the soldiers on the helicopter that had brought them down to London.

He glanced up at the soldier’s impassive face, and the implant on the side of his skull flickered with green light. Sam suddenly realised that it was flashing in perfect unison with the scratching noise. He instinctively reached for the device with his mind, just as he had done with the Mothership’s Voidborn tech. The device responded and he felt the instantaneous bond between his own mind and the alien technology as the implant inside his own skull connected to it. He sent it the quickest and simplest command he could.

Deactivate
.

The soldier collapsed in a heap on the floor, his protection from the Voidborn control signal instantly gone. He was just another Sleeper now. Sam bent down and picked up the fallen man’s rifle, throwing it to Rachel.

‘You’re a better shot than me,’ he said, pulling the soldier’s pistol from the holster on his hip. ‘I have no idea if anyone will have noticed me doing that. We’d better get moving.’

‘What did you do to him?’ Rachel asked, looking down at the fallen man and then back towards Sam.

‘I think I found his off switch,’ Sam said, tapping the side of his own head.

‘I still don’t understand why they would help Talon,’ she said. ‘They’ve seen what the Vore can do – why would they willingly help him after he ordered them released in London?’

‘I think there’s more to those things than meets the eye,’ Sam said, pointing at the implant on the side of the soldier’s head. ‘It wasn’t just blocking the control signal, it was as if it was receiving another signal from somewhere else – not Voidborn, something different.’

‘Talon,’ Stirling replied. ‘That would make sense, I suppose. He would need to be sure that his men’s loyalty was beyond question.’

‘Well, let’s hope he’s too distracted at the moment to notice that one of his puppets has just had his strings cut,’ Rachel said, looking both ways along the empty corridor. ‘Do either of you know where we are? These corridors all look the same to me.’

‘I tried to keep track of where we were being taken when the Hunters brought us here,’ Stirling said. ‘I think we’re not far from the central hangar deck.’

‘Don’t ask me,’ Sam said, pulling the spare clips for the pistol from the soldier’s belt. ‘I just followed the Servant around whenever I was up here. It’s a maze.’

‘We need to get to the control room,’ Rachel said, ‘if we’re going to stop Talon.’

‘I think we’re going to need more than two guns to do that,’ Stirling said.

‘We have to try,’ Rachel said. ‘If he’s prepared to release the Vore in London, God only knows what he’ll do with a Mothership. He clearly doesn’t care how many of us have to die so he can win his war.’

‘Rachel’s right,’ Sam said. ‘We have to do something.’

‘I don’t disagree with you,’ Stirling said, ‘but we need a plan. We know nothing about this Talon creature or his connection to the Illuminate, whoever or whatever that is.’

Suddenly, the unconscious soldier’s radio crackled into life.

‘Operative seven report status,’ the voice on the other end said.

‘Let’s go,’ Rachel said, looking nervously down the corridor. In the distance they could hear the sound of marching boots.

‘This way,’ Stirling said, gesturing for them to follow him in the opposite direction. The three of them ran down the gently curving corridor, the sudden shouts from behind suggesting that the guards had found their unconscious companion.

‘Why isn’t he sending the Hunters after us?’ Rachel asked as they sprinted out into the cavernous expanse of one of the Mothership’s several hangar bays. All around them Hunters floated next to the drop-ships lining the floor of the bay, performing routine maintenance. None of the hovering bio-mechanical creatures paid them the slightest bit of attention – they simply continued about their appointed tasks, apparently unconcerned by the arrival of these unexpected humans.

‘I have no idea,’ Stirling said. ‘I suppose we should be thankful for small mercies.’

‘Maybe he can’t,’ Sam said, scanning the room for a place where they could take cover. ‘I never really controlled them either. I just asked the Servant and she carried out the commands herself. Maybe without her Talon can’t access all of the Mothership’s systems.’

Sam ducked behind a large black cube that was throbbing with blue light, long glowing cables running from it to the belly of a nearby drop-ship. Rachel and Stirling joined him, crouching down, listening carefully for signs of their pursuers. It didn’t take long. Half a dozen of Talon’s enslaved soldiers jogged into the hangar, fanning out across the deck, weapons raised.