The Man From U.N.D.E.A.D.'s Christmas Carol (8 page)

“
Are you sure about that?
”
Veronika asked, pointing to the other package that I had selected out of the stores.

“
Not one little bit,
”
I told her. We were momentarily alone in the command tent with the plans of the Horned One
’
s compound in Hertfordshire laid out on the table in front of us. The other commanders had been sent off to organise the forces left to the Resistance for one last operation.
“
Tell me about
this
David.
”

The request surprised her and even in the low light I could see her eyes soften and shine a bit more as they moistened. She did not let a tear fall, though. This version of Veronika was older and her innate toughness had been tempered into an iron-willed control. She was, though, unmistakeably my Veronika.

“
I
’
m not sure that I should,
”
she said.
“
This is your future after all.
”

“
If Mikhail was here I
’
m sure that he would point out that it is only one possible future
,
although it would take him a great many more words and probably a few diagrams as well,
”
I replied.

“
David was my son,
”
she revealed. After a few moments she added
“
Our son.
”

Though I had been expecting something like that it still came as a blow because of the word...

“
Was?
”

“
He died,
”
Veronika reported sadly, but with an edge of anger that you could have used to cut timber.
“
In the early days
after the cells were opened
the Agency set up protective zones. The one we were in was attacked and... Well, he died and I got this,
”
she ran a finger along her scar.
“
There isn
’
t a day ...
”

“
No, there isn
’
t,
”
I interrupted her, not being able to bear seeing her like this.
I have seen many of her moods and felt the strength of her spirit on more than one occasion, but I had never thought to see her soul so crushed. I couldn’t take away her pain (and she wouldn’t want me to if I could), but I could at least stop reminding her of it.
Though I could rationalise that this wasn
’
t real, that it was all some sort of play created by Yule to make me
dance to his tune, the flood of feelings t
hat was crashing through me was
only too real.
,
“
and there won
’
t be another
, I promise
. I would have liked to
have
see
n
him.
”

Veronika reached into the breast pocket of her fatigues and brought out a crumpled piece of paper. It was an inkjet printout of a mobile phone photograph. The quality wasn
’
t great, but I could clearly make out the face of the young boy shading his eyes from the sun and smiling at whoever took the picture. He looked a very great deal like the boy who I had met backstage so very recently
(or such a long time ago)
.
How was it possible for me to feel astonishment, delight, pride,
loss
… each one distinctly and yet mashed together in a terrible tsunami? One thing I did know, though, was that these emotions were leading
me
to hate and my hate was very definitely going to lead to someone else’s suffering.

“
He was
very much like you,
”
Veronika said fondly, folding the paper back up and putting it back into her pocket.
“
And if what you say is true he may well be so again.
”

I did not know what to say. I had no words to convey the whirl of emotions that seeing the boy
’
s face had stirred up in me.
There was no unfeeling quip for a moment like this.
It isn
’
t often that a man gets to look on the face of the son he may one day have (
at least
not outside
of television science fiction
shows wher
e it happens all the time
).

“
Thank you,
”
was all I could manage
and it seemed
so very little
despite how much I invested in
it
.

Veronika turned all serious and businesslike, the moment of intimacy past,
“
You need to know about the Horned One.
”

“
I do,
”
I agreed
and allowed the flame of hatred to burn coldly
,
“
If I am to kill him.
”

The Horned One, she told me, was Yule himself, the Winter God of Northern Lands. Of all the demons t
hat had been loosed upon the worl
d
in this little shadow play
, he was the most powerful. There was not a w
eapon that had been able to touch
him. When he had waded into battle with his troops
,
nothing had been able to stand against him. Eyewitnesses had described him as a giant with the head of a stag. H
e was crowned with antlers and walked on the cloven hooves of a deer, but he
fought with the hands of a man. He wielded magic, however, with the power of a god.

Which was a bit of a problem.

It has to be said about jetpacks that as a mode of transport they
’
re pretty rubbish. For one thing, when you put them on they
’
re really heavy. For another, they make more noise than a crowd of
Spurs FC supporters cheering an
Arsenal own goal. They corner with the ease of the average comet and have the same braking characteristics as a cannonball. They are, however, enormous fun and the closest that the human race has come to unaided flight. Many attempts have been made at spells that allow people to fly, but they all suffered roughly the same design flaws as Icarus
’
wings. Finally, all experimentation had been halted by the International Aviation Authority after yet another hopeful inventor got sucked into a passenger airliner
’
s engine
over Milan
. Military research continues in supersecret conditions, of course, but the most recent Agency reports into the ongoing programmes suggest that they have created more impact craters in various deserts than working prototypes.

I could see the whole battle laid out below me as I streaked across above the fighting on twin tails of fire. The sheer exhilaration of speed and freedom was drowned out by the apprehension of fuel
supply
eruption
s or abrupt connections
with solid surfaces. I had no training in using the bloody thing, so I wasn
’
t about to try anything fancy like loops or corkscrew turns. It was all I could do to keep
going
in a straight line toward my objective.

The human forces struck at dusk. It is more traditional to attack at dawn, but we were making a personal statement of rebellion
,
so dusk it was. Armoured Personnel Carriers struck both flanks of the encampment in unison, opening up with their large calibre guns firing explosive-tipped rounds. The invisibility spells they had been cloaked with were rendered useless as soon as the first shots were fired, but at least they had gotten us within firing range. The unsuspecting demons were caught by surprise and reacted poorly. Just as they were gathering to deliver a devastating magical response the remnants of human air power dropped their own stealth spells and every last bomb that they had. The ranks of demons were annihilated by a combination of high-explosives, fire and nails. The nail bombs had been my idea. I find that there are few magical defences against a hail of bits of metal travelling at nearly supersonic speeds.

The carnage was terrifying, but it was all on the enemy
’
s side, so I didn
’
t worry about it.

The element of surprise had been used up, though, and now the defenders reacted. Fireballs and lightning bolts streaked across the darkening sky, creating a beautiful and deadly pyrotechnic show that brought down three of the bombers before they beat a hasty retreat. Demons of all kinds raced out of the entrance to the main complex that had been constructed in the heart of the quarry
. They
threw themselves at the attackers with little thought for their
own safety (or anything else since
the average intelligence of infantry demons is kept low to ensure that they don
’
t mind being used as cannon fodder). They weren
’
t ever going to win on tactics
as they swarmed out of the excavation toward the humans
, but they were easily going to win on
numbers
.

As the last of them streamed into the night, I ignited the fires of the jetpack and aimed myself at the acces
s
point
from which they had all just exited
. The aerial battle had already been won and so all of the enemy
’
s attention had been plac
ed on the ground assault troops
. There were no
countermeasures launched against me, which was just as well because any evasive manoeuvres that I had been forced to attempt would have surely manoeuvred me evasively straight into the ground. A few demons looked up at me in surprise and one with surprisingly strong legs even leaped up at me, getting my boot in its face as reward, but I flashed unopposed across the compound.

Now came the tricky bit. At the last moment, I turned the jetpack skyward and released the harness coupling it to my body. As it raced up into the night sky, I followed a parabolic arc aimed at the entry into the enemy stronghold. As upward curve became downward plunge, I took out what looked li
ke a gun and fired at the wall/
floor interfa
ce that I was rapidly approaching
. Pellets of concentrated foam flew out of the gun, expanding and reacting with the air. By the time that they
hit the concrete,
they had ballooned together into a spongy mass the size
of
a couple of mattresses. I hit the foam and it compacted beneath me, bleeding away my speed and turning a bone-mashing impact into a bone-jarring deceleration. Unfortunately, I had hit the protective mass whilst inverted and tumbled
out onto my head
.

The battle was raging outside and I hoped that Veronika was staying well out of it, though I knew she would be wherever she felt that she could do the most good. The defending demons were also outside, so I climbed shakily to my feet and u
nstrapped the briefcase that I had previously
strapped across my chest. I then jogged down the corridor and into the heart of the enemy camp.

Yule was, as advertised, a giant. He stood about fifteen feet tall in his cloven socks, a strange mixture of man and stag. Though his legs ended in hooves, his arms ended in hands. He was watching a bank of vision spheres that were floating in the air in front of him, each showing a scene
from the battle outside. As a result, he
had his back turned to me. He wore no clothes, but his mostly-human shape was covered with a warm brown pelt. I activated the briefcase, which I then left by the doorway, and started to creep toward him, pulling a hunting knife out of my belt.

“
Do you really think that I can
’
t hear you?
”
the god asked suddenly.
“
Or smell you for that matter.
”

He turned around slowly, ponderously, showing off the sheer power that was contained within the giant body and then looked down at me through his startling, vertically-slit eyes.

“
I showered this morning,
”
I objected.
“
Of course, I
’
ve been through a bit since then.
”

“
And I have been impressed,
”
Yule allowed. It was very strange to hear a human voice issue out of the mouth of a deer, but since that mouth belonged to a fifteen foot tall deer-headed god in a potentially fictitious potential future it was the kind of strange that I could accept.
“
Very few people get past the first demon and almost nobody gets to me.
”