Ice War (6 page)

“They wouldn’t be able to,” Wilton said.

“So I asked for you, and they said you didn’t work there any more,” Chisnall said.

“Yeah, they kicked me out,” Wilton said. “I was too good looking. Never liked the place much anyway.”

Chisnall laughed. “Kept growing, did you?”

“Just a little,” Wilton said.

“What are you doing now?” Chisnall asked.

“Gunner on a fast-attack hovercraft,” Wilton said.

“Sounds cool,” Chisnall said.

“It is,” Wilton said. “Much more fun than tabbing around the desert with a bunch of whiny Angels.”

“Okay, so how do I get hold of Barnard?” Chisnall asked.

“I should be able to relay a message,” Wilton said.

“No, I need to talk to her directly,” Chisnall said.

“I’ll see what I can arrange,” Wilton said.

“Okay, thanks,” Chisnall said. “Give her this number and get her to call me.”

There was a short silence on the line and Wilton thought Chisnall had gone. That made his heart race. It was as if by hanging up the phone, he would discover that this was all part of a dream, just a figment of his imagination. That Chisnall was not really alive.

“Hey, Chisnall,” he said.

“Yeah?”

“These Pukes that you’re working with, would they be willing to help us?” Wilton asked.

“Maybe. Depends what it is,” Chisnall said.

Wilton hesitated, wondering if he was giving too much away. He didn’t know who else might be listening at Chisnall’s end.

“You said there are spies in ACOG. What did you mean?” he asked. “Are they traitors? Like Brogan?”

“You mean from Uluru?” Chisnall asked.

“Yeah, like from Uluru, or whatever,” Wilton said.

“I don’t know,” Chisnall said.

“Can you ask someone?” Wilton asked.

“The people I’m working with wouldn’t know,” Chisnall said. “Uluru was top secret. Most Bzadians don’t even know the program existed.”

“Shame,” Wilton said. “I don’t know who to trust nowadays.”

“Trust no one,” Chisnall said.

“There are some soldiers, technicians,” Wilton said, “who … I mean … It could be super important. For Price and the others.”

There was a silence at the other end and again Wilton thought the connection had been broken.

“These soldiers, do you have access to their personnel files?”

“I can try to get it,” Wilton said.

“Dig around in their history, see if everything adds up. Or …” Chisnall’s voice trailed off.

“Or what?”

“You could show their photos to Brogan. See if she recognises them. If they are from Uluru, then she just might.”

“You think she’d help?”

“Maybe not. But show her the photos anyway. Watch her reaction.”

“I’ll try that,” Wilton said.

“I gotta go,” Chisnall said. “Get Barnard to call me as soon as possible.”

“Solid copy,” Wilton said.

“Hey, Wilton.”

“Yeah?”

“It’s been good to hear your voice.”

“You too, Ryan.”

When he hung up the phone, Wilton found his eyes watering up again. He had lived with the certainty of Chisnall’s death for over a year. The truth was almost too much to deal with.

The tears flowed freely. But they were good tears.

The shower nozzle unscrewed silently. It was a metal pipe with a ball-shaped showerhead on the end, which unscrewed as well, leaving Price with a heavy pipe about twenty centimetres long. It fitted neatly into the sleeve of her tunic, when she unclipped the cuff. She hid the showerhead behind the spherical toilet bowl and closed the lid. The toilet made a whooshing sound.

She left her cuff loose and checked that the metal pipe would slip easily down into her hand when she wanted it to, then opened the door and stepped out into the main cabin of the tank. She should have been afraid. But she wasn’t. Mostly there was a strange exhilaration. A sense of imminent danger and action.

“My turn,” Monster said, standing and stepping towards her.

She let the pipe slip down just into her hand, so the end of it touched her palm. The Tsar and Barnard tensed, ever so slightly.

The Bzadian soldiers seemed unaware of the shift in posture of the Angels. Zim glanced at Monster, then turned back to the computer screen he was working on.

Price let the pipe slip lower, until the end of it was in her hand. She hid it behind her leg.

“Stop what you are doing!”

The voice came from the centre of the cabin, from the hatch. Price turned to see a Bzadian in a colonel’s uniform climbing up through the hatchway.

That changed the odds, but not much. She took a firm grip on the end of the pipe.

“Sit down!” the colonel said. The gun in his hand changed the odds a lot more. It was aimed directly between her eyes.

All Price could see was the gun. Monster paused, halfway to the bathroom, watching her for a cue. She shook her head.

By now the other Bzadians had guns in their hands and any chance was gone.

Why hadn’t she been quicker?

“All of you, sit down,” the colonel ordered, indicating the infantry transport seats around the outer wall of the tank. Price eased the pipe back into her sleeve and, with a quick shake of her head at the others, went to sit down.

The colonel climbed up, followed by a very hard-faced soldier, a female, who towered at least a head above the others. An insignia on her breastplate marked her as one of the elite Vaza corps, bodyguards who protected senior Bzadian officers. Her jaw was wide and her nose was crooked, broken a few times and never set properly. That was a Bzadian badge of courage and toughness.

The colonel himself was less rough-hewn, almost feminine in his features. He wore glasses, which was highly unusual for a Bzadian. He took off his helmet and put away his side-arm as he walked to the Angels, stopping in front of Price. He removed his glasses then sniffed the air a few times. There was a sense of indifference about him. A sense that he was wasting his valuable time dealing with such a trivial matter.

He replaced his glasses and, without warning, his right hand shot out as quickly as the strike of a snake. He grabbed Price’s face, squeezing her cheeks together, forcing her to open her mouth. He examined her tongue before releasing her.

“I am Colonel Nokz’z,” he said. He wiped his hand on his uniform with an expression of distaste. “You are the leader?”

“Yes, I am, and I demand to be returned to my unit immediately,” Price said. She added an extra buzz after the last word, the Bzadian way of showing annoyance.

“Your unit?” Nokz’z asked.

“Second regiment, first infantry division,” Price said.

“Why are they not in cuffs?” Nokz’z asked, with a glance at Zim.

The guns aimed at the Angels suddenly became a lot more steady, the focus of those holding them a lot more intense. The colonel’s bodyguard also unholstered her weapon and aimed it at Price.

“This is an outrage!” Price said. She tried to remember how Chisnall had managed to be so convincing in the Australian desert.

“What is the need to cuff them?” Zim asked.

Nokz’z did not seem to hear either of them. “Secure these scumbugz.”

“Scumbugz?” Zim queried.

“Scumbugz,” Nokz’z said, still without addressing Price. “They are humans. I can smell them. They are the ones they call Angels.”

“I don’t know what you are talking about,” Price said.

“Our intelligence said that the Angels were shut down,” Zim said.

“Let us find out,” Nokz’z said. He took a small electronic device from a pocket and held it in front of Price. A green flash illuminated her face.

He walked to a nearby computer and pressed buttons. Nothing happened at first, then one of the screens displayed a recognisable picture of Price running through one of the corridors at Uluru. It was taken from a security camera, so was from above, but her face was clear.

He sniffed again and turned to Zim. “I told you I could smell them. This one was at Uluru.”

“Someone who looks like me,” Price tried, but it sounded desperate, even to her.

“Facial recognition algorithms cannot be so easily fooled,” Nokz’z said. He glanced at Zim. “Cuff them.”

The Bzadians first removed the battery packs that powered the Angels’ combat suits, and the spares. That was a clever move, Price thought. It trapped them in the tank as securely as if they were in an iron cage. Without the warmth of the powered thermal suits, they would freeze to death rapidly in the extreme conditions outside.

The battery packs, along with their coil-guns, grenades and other equipment, were placed in equipment lockers, next to the driver’s control panel, well out of reach.

Their helmets were taken and placed on high racks. Another lock on the door of the cage. They were going nowhere without helmets.

She was made to face the wall and a gun was placed on the back of her head to ensure she didn’t resist. A flexible plastic collar was placed around her neck. On either side of the collar was a wrist loop.

The soldier who grasped her right arm stopped and extracted the shower pipe. He handed it to Zim.

“Whatever would you need that for?” Nokz’z asked.

Price didn’t answer.

Once her arms were secured by the wrist loops, Price was made to sit. The neck-cuff was clipped to a bracket on the back of the seat. It was ruthless, simple and startlingly effective. Any movement tightened the collar, choking her. Price found that she had to sit straight, as if at attention. Even slouching was enough to cut off her air supply.

Barnard was next to be cuffed, scowling at the two soldiers that did it.

Emile was last in line. The curve in the wall of the tank meant that Price could see his face clearly. He was staring at her.

Price glanced around the cabin. Her eye fell on the equipment locker. Their guns and grenades were there, so close but so far away. But if someone was quick …

She looked back at Emile then flicked her eyes to the locker. Emile queried her with a raised eyebrow.

“Puke spray,”
Price mouthed the words.

Emile nodded and glanced over at the locker.

Half of their grenades were explosive, the rest were puke spray. Price herself had inadvertently invented those during Operation Magnum, when she had shot a hole in a can of the spray. The idea had since been developed into a standard weapon carried by all Special Forces teams.

If Emile could get to one of the puke spray grenades and set it off inside the tank, it would immobilise all the Bzadians on board, with little effect on the Angels.

Monster was also looking at her, Price realised, and shaking his head minutely.
No, don’t risk it
, was the clear message.

But they had to do something.

The Bzadians cuffed Wall and The Tsar then moved to Monster.

Monster made them nervous. That was clear from the way they kept a good distance from him and from the steady way the coil-gun was trained on him as one of the soldiers moved in closer to cuff him.

“Turn around,” Nokz’z said.

Monster turned to face the wall. All attention was on him. All guns were on him.

Emile was still watching her. She flicked her eyes one more time to the lockers.

Two Bzadians grasped Monster’s arms and started to raise them towards the neck-cuff. Monster offered no resistance.

“Dingo,” Price said. There was a blur of movement as Emile leaped out of his seat.

The gun that had been covering Monster flicked to the side, towards Emile. Too late, the soldier realised that was a mistake. Monster twisted his wrists, latching onto the arms of his captors, and pulling them into him. He thrust himself backwards, using the Bzadians as a kind of shield, ramming them into the soldier behind. The Vaza, the colonel’s bodyguard, sensing that the real danger came from Monster not Emile, turned her weapon but could not get a clean shot. Emile raced around the inside of the tank, a miniature human tornado, pinballing off the walls.

Guns tried to track him and arms stretched out for him, but he was far too fast for them. He made it to the lockers and grabbed a grenade, reached for the pin, then changed his mind with a quick shake of his head at Price. Already, guns were turning towards him, but he ducked under their aim, sliding across the floor to the hatch and disappearing out of sight.

Why hadn’t he pulled the pin? Why had he just made a run for it? Why? It was the wrong grenade, Price realised. Half of the grenades in that locker were explosive ones. Emile had grabbed the wrong one! An explosive grenade in a confined area like this tank would kill everyone inside.

Monster was wrestling with two of the Bzadians, but it was an unfair fight. Two on one. He tied them in knots and dumped them on top of the Vaza. The soldiers on the other side of the tank cabin were trying to get a clean shot at him and, as he deposited the soldiers on the floor, one of them took the chance. Monster was flung backwards by the impact of the bullet but was quickly on his feet, deep cracks spreading across the armoured plates of his combat suit. Another shot and he would be dead. The crash of the gunshot was still ringing in Price’s ears as, with an apologetic glance backwards, Monster dived headfirst into the open hatch.