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  "In that case I lay real money it's connected to the Heligo thing," said Cleesh.

  "The thing on the clip?"

  "Yeah. You've run the clip since I patched you, right?"

  "No, I–"

  "Freek
^®
, Falk! Get in the game! The translation I got off your sound-for-sound version pretty much makes it clear that Heligo is the thing. Whatever Heligo is."

  "Shit. Okay. I'm going to play it back now and–"

  The booming came again. Somebody kicking the outside of the tank.

  "Nes! Nestor!"

  Falk scrambled up, eyes open. Valdes blundered into the bedroom, urgent.

  "You gotta come, man! You gotta see!"

TWENTY-EIGHT

Outside, night had fallen, a cold, hard night full of meantempered rain. Falk followed Valdes through to the palatial living room. Everyone had gathered there to stare out of the expensive ribbon windows towards the west. Even Bigmouse, slumped on the couch, had opened his eyes and propped himself up a little.

  Beyond the edge of the woodland, three or four miles away, the landscape was alight. Great shock flashes of orange glare lit up the low clouds, huge, trembling lights. After each, time-lapsed, came the distant thump of detonations. Each thump sounded like someone kicking the outside of a theoretically conceptual metal box.

  It was an artillery duel, an armour clash of significant size, running down the line of the highway and across the area where the depot lay. The quick, flickering flashes, burps of combusting gas, were the signatures of main armour weapons firing. The bigger, slower blooms of radiance were detonations. The fireballs of hi-ex shells. The brief, vast explosions of something going up as its magazine or powerplant was hit. The neon-spark showers of detonating munitions or shattering armour hulls. Falk could see flurries of tracers and the occasional odd, jump-strobe blister of hardbeam fire.

  "Fuck," whispered Preben. They could all see the amber reflection of their own appalled faces in the window glass, lit by the distant fires. The sealed-unit glass shivered in its frame with the more significant shockwaves. Tal had Lenka pulled tight against her.

  "What's happening, Falk?" asked Cleesh.

  "The SO counter-offensive has begun," he said. "Ground forces coming right up the valley and the highway run, meeting Bloc units head-on."

  "We can all fucking see that, you moron," said Rash.

  "Sorry, I–" said Falk. "Sorry."

  Falk could see small firefly lights, dodging and darting around the boiling lightshow. Hopter gunships on ground attack, visible because of the glittering discharge of their weaponpods.

  "The fucking forest is on fire," said Valdes, pointing. "The fucking forest."

  Over to their left, two miles from the house, a large section of the treeline was burning hot yellow, almost incandescent. Falk could see the black stripes of tree trunks in the brightness of it, realised that streaming smoke from the fire, black on black, was masking a whole section of the malevolent night sky. Something had gone astray, hit the trees, or maybe something had shot at a target using the forest cover. H-beams, probably, roasting and igniting vegetation like that.

  They were all staring at the forest fire when the big one came. They felt it shake the building, and the flash was so bright they all cried out and winced away. An immense sheet of flame spread up into the sky, seething and ferocious. It was like some supervolcanic catastrophe. The blaze didn't die back, it grew. The night became a lurid, amber day. Flames rose half a mile into the air, wet orange fire that rolled and folded into hellish black smoke.

  A few seconds after the flash and the earth shock, the blast wind reached them, thrashing the trees in the nearby woods, flattening the long grass of the meadow, peppering the long ribbon window with grass seeds, water droplets, grit and twigs. The pelting lasted several seconds before it subsided.

  "The depot," said Rash. "The depot just went up."

  "No way that was intentional targeting," said Preben.

  "No shit," Rash replied.

  The colossal fuel blaze filled the western sky like a sunset.

  "We should get clear. Get out of here," said Falk.

  "Where to?" asked Rash dubiously.

  "Into the hills. Away from that."

  "Yeah, how?"

  "On foot if we have to."

  "What about Bigmouse?" asked Rash.

  "We carry him."

  "We won't get far, then," said Rash.

  Falk looked at him.

  "I don't think staying here is going to be such a great option for very much longer," he said, and then gestured towards the light show. "Would you like to head that way?"

  Rash returned his look.

  "Right now, we're fucked whatever we do," he said. "I think we should try the comms again. See if we can raise some friendlies now they're close."

  "Yeah," said Preben. "Good chance they've cleared this jamming shit by now."

  "Hey!"

  They looked around. It was Tal. She was standing beside the couch, looking down at Bigmouse. Her posture was uncomfortable, unsettled.

  "What is wrong with him?" she asked.

  "What did she say?" asked Rash.

  "Shit!" said Falk. He went straight over to Bigmouse, knelt down beside him. The others crowded in behind him.

  "He's not breathing," said Preben. Bigmouse had slumped back again, his eyes closed. Even in the firelit gloom of the room, Falk could see the shadow of cyanosis on Bigmouse's cheeks and lips.

  "Oh fuck!" he said. "Don't you fucking do this to me, Mouse! Don't you fucking dare!"

  "Clear his airway, man!" Valdes cried.

  "Yeah, so fucking helpful," snapped Falk. He was struggling to loosen Bigmouse's blate and shirt. The pressure on Bigmouse's bruised torso should have caused a sharp pain response. Mouse didn't stir. He wasn't breathing at all.

  "Fuck, come on," Falk said.

  "What's happening?" asked Cleesh inside his head.

  "None of us are medics," said Falk loudly. "None of us are fucking medics. Times like now, I really wish I knew what to do with someone who had stopped breathing as a result of severe blunt-force trauma to the chest."

  "No shit," replied Preben, helping with the blate, "we've got to make him breathe."

  "Stand by," said Cleesh. "I'm getting Underwood."

  "You got to pump his chest, man," Valdes said, pushing in. "I've seen it. You've got to get his lungs going."

  "We have no idea of the injuries," replied Rash. "We start pushing his chest in and out, we could be ramming broken rib down through his lungs. Could collapse them. Or he could have a what, a blood build-up."

  "Haemothorax," said Falk.

  "Yeah, that. I've heard of chest wall damage where whole sections of fucking ribcage become detached."

  "Is there any first aid stuff in the house?" Falk asked Tal in Russian. "Anything at all? Anything you've seen?"

  "There is a box in the outhouse. A first aid box for the builders who were here," she replied, eyes wide. "We sometimes took painkillers from it."

  "Go and get it. Show Preben where it is," he said. He switched to English. "Preben, Tal's going to take you to get a medical pack from one of the outbuildings. Get it fast."

  They left the room together, running.

  "Mr Falk, this is Underwood," said a new voice in his head. "What can you tell me?"

  "He took several rounds in the body-plating yesterday," said Falk. "Bad bruising, chest pain, now he's stopped breathing altogether."

  "What?" asked Rash.

  "I'm just thinking out loud," said Falk.

  "You're probably looking at severe pulmonary contusion," said Underwood gently. "Is his skin blue? His lips?"

  "Yes," said Falk.

  "Yes, what?" asked Valdes.

  "How long since he stopped breathing?" asked Underwood.

  "How long since he stopped breathing?" asked Falk.

  "Five minutes?" said Valdes.

  "He was okay when we came in here," said Rash. "He spoke to me. Two minutes?"

  "Two minutes, you think?" replied Falk.

  "You've got four or five at the most before the damage becomes irreversible," said Underwood. Her voice sounded like she was standing on the other side of a locked door. "You need to clear the airway and get him ventilated. You can do CPR?"

  "CPR is going to make his injury worse," said Falk.

  "Right, right," agreed Valdes.

  "Being dead is going to make his injury worse too," said Underwood. "Start CPR. Is there any way you can intubate him? Do you have any medical equipment?"

  "Start CPR," Falk said to Rash.

  "You think?" Rash looked dubious.

  "Yes. Can you do it?"

  "Yes," said Rash.

  "We've got a medical pack on the way," said Falk.

  "I know we have," said Rash, kneeling down beside Bigmouse and looking at Falk as though he wasn't making any sense.

  "CPR is the best we can do until it gets here," said Falk.

  "When the pack arrives, you'll need the endotracheal tube and a bag valve mask," said Underwood.

  Rash had begun CPR. From behind them, Milla uttered a cry.

  Falk turned to look.

  "What is it?" he asked.

  She was staring out of the window at the firelit night.

  He got up, joined her. The depot fire still lit the valley, and the armour fight was still blinking and blistering along the highway line. A soft rain of burning cinders, glowing like coals was snowing down across the landscape, the consequence of the vast depot eruption.

  But there were vehicles approaching, coming up the edge of the meadow, on the same side as the house. They were transport trucks, light utility vehicles, running with their lights off, but the glare of the depot flare was so huge, visibility was like a strong sunset.

  There were three of them. Three trucks. Behind them, at a distance, two more.

  "Are they coming here?" Milla asked him. It was the first time she addressed him directly.

  "Yeah," he said.

  "Who are they?"

  He adjusted his glares, applied a touch of zoom and vision balance. The trucks were SObild carriers, pretty standard cargo ATVs, painted drab-black. They were the sort of military utility vehicle either side might use. But his money was on Bloc forces. But why were they coming this way? Were they fleeing the fight, or hunting for an objective? Were they simply looking for a fall-back position to defend in the face of the high-scale SOMD aggression?

  One thing was certain. There wouldn't be any negotiating. From the moment they began taking Eyeburn down and eliminating the locals, the Bloc ops force had demonstrated zero interest in talking about anything. This was serious business, professional. There was no wiggle room whatsoever.

  "We've got company coming!" he called out.

  "How much?" Rash replied.

  "Too much."

  Valdes hurried over to the window beside Falk and the girl. He groaned.

  "We've got to go, man," he said to Falk. "I mean, just go! I don't run from fights, but I don't mind running from stupid!"

  "What about Bigmouse?" Rash said.

  "I don't want to ditch him, man!" Valdes cried, turning. "He's my brother, and I don't want to ditch him, no way! But he's already gone, Rash! Look at him! And if we stay here for him, he will get us scorched!"

  Rash stared at Falk. He was still applying CPR. Lenka was kneeling beside him, holding Bigmouse's head steady.

  "I guess it's your call," he said to Falk.

  "Is it?" Falk replied. "Is it really? That's fucking great."

  Preben and Tal ran back into the room lugging a large green plastic medi-crate.

  "We've got vehicles inbound!" Preben declared, slightly out of breath.

  "We know," replied Falk.

  Preben set the crate down beside the couch.

  "We've got to exit," he said. "Absolutely now."

  "Yes, we have," said Falk.

  Rash was still applying CPR. Every time his head came up, he looked at Falk.

  "You got a pulse?" Falk asked.

  "No," said Rash.

  Falk looked at Tal.

  "Open the box fast," he said in Russian. "We need a throat tube and a bag mask."

  She nodded, and swung the lid off the plastic case.

  "What are you doing?" Preben asked. "We haven't got time for any of that shit!"

  "We tube him. We bring him with us," said Falk.

  "Fuck, he's dead, Bloom!" Preben cried.

  "We tube him, we bring him with us," said Rash softly.

  Preben gazed down at Rash.

  "You're both fucking insane. Pretards. Total pretards!"

  "You and Valdes," said Rash. "Go keep the back door clear. The back of the annexe. We'll have to leave that way."

  He glanced at Falk.

  "Right?"

  Falk nodded.

  "Right. Do like Rash said. Keep the area clear. Even if we don't get far, we want to get into the trees at least. Maybe get down in cover, wait for them to move on."

  Valdes and Preben stared at him.

  "What? Am I speaking Russian again?" he snapped. "Get the fuck on with it!"

  "Jesus!" Valdes replied.

  "Do it quiet! Quiet!" Falk insisted. "No shooting unless you absolutely have to. If we can sneak out, that's a better way to go."

  They turned to leave.

  "Preben!" Falk called. He picked up Bigmouse's hefty thumper and the bag of grenade shells.

  "If you do have to start shooting, make it count."

  Preben nodded. Fast and fluid, he clamped his M3A to his back plate, slung the shell bag around his neck and took the thumper. He and Valdes headed for the annexe. Valdes was still grumbling.

  Falk glanced back at the view. The lead truck was less than a minute away. The burning soot was still snowing.

  "Okay, we're going to intubate him," he announced.

  "And you know how to do that?" Rash asked.

  "There's probably no point if there isn't a pulse," said Underwood, like she was suddenly standing right beside him.