"Emilie? Where were you? I was - we opened the gateway, Emilie, it"s wide wide open! But they cheated us. They betrayed us! They didn"t want us to join them - they wanted to cross over! And now they"re here, they"re here, they"re here, they"re here." The great man laughed like a frightened kid, then trembled uncontrollably. "And what they are - oh G.o.d, what they are!" open! But they cheated us. They betrayed us! They didn"t want us to join them - they wanted to cross over! And now they"re here, they"re here, they"re here, they"re here." The great man laughed like a frightened kid, then trembled uncontrollably. "And what they are - oh G.o.d, what they are!"
Mitch wanted to say something, snap him out of it. But Jacks was in command, just about.
She shook him hard to beat the tremors. "Crayford! How can we have opened the gateway? I"ve got the key here!" She tugged at the left strap of her backpack. "We found it. It"s the real thing, Crayford. Genuine United States Air Force ET hi-tech - and it"s ours! Everything you dreamed of, everything you saw, it"s right here in this pack! You can"t have opened any gateway. This is the key right here, has to be!"
"Then close it. Use it to close the gateway, Emilie."
For the first time Crayford was actually looking at and seeing Emilie. And that, for Mitch, was scarier than when he"d been out of it.
"We can stop them. We can stop them sending any more.
The Army can"t stop them. No, the Army - the Army," he yanked at Emilie"s coat, trying to bring her down to his level, "the Army is too busy hunting me. me. They brought a Psi with them, Emilie. She touched my mind. They"ll find me. They"ll find all of us and they"ll finish us before we can stop them." They brought a Psi with them, Emilie. She touched my mind. They"ll find me. They"ll find all of us and they"ll finish us before we can stop them."
Jacks swallowed on a bad taste. Suddenly she shoved Crayford off and smacked him hard, a man"s punch. Mitch blinked. Crayford squirmed in the snow, squirting blood from his nose.
"What did you just do?"
"If he wants to run so bad," determined Jacks, hypnotised by the sidewinder rhythms of the fallen man, "he can carry on. The Army must have hit us and this one cracked like an egg. We"re going to pay them back. You and me, Mitch."
Mitch Lagoy was the one with the bad taste now.
Commanders" speeches were supposed to be inspirational.
"You just knocked Crayford Boyle on his a.s.s! And now you want to take on the Army?"
Jacks didn"t like that: she turned on him, and her wild glare drove him back a pace. "That," she wasn"t satisfied until her face was right into his, "isn"t Crayford Boyle any more. I don"t know what that is, but it"s all finished. We We are finished. are finished.
Our dream, our mission. It"s over, Mitch. Mitch. " She never called him Mitch. " She never called him Mitch.
She left him then, spinning around and ripping herself free of the pack. She chucked it onto the writhing pile at her feet.
"We won"t be needing this any more. Total waste. Time we were leaving, Lagoy." When the b.i.t.c.h finally looked his way, she was evil on fire.
"We should tidy up before we go."
Chapter Five.
Clad in her overwhites, Leela was looking forward to being at one with the landscape. This first stage of the hunt was not about stealth though. It was about speed. For Leela, it was also about hanging on in fear for her life.
She rode with her arms anch.o.r.ed around Kristal"s waist.
The vehicle ploughed along, churning up the snows like mushy paper, the sky and trees zipping by in flashes. Her limbs were taut, and the engine sent powerful vibrations through her calf and thigh muscles. Despite the goggles, Leela felt the full blast of wind in her lace whenever she peered over Kristal"s shoulder, and yet she felt a frequent need to keep looking. The fierce noise and the occasional b.u.mp did nothing to ease her fears.
"How much further?" she tried to shout in Kristal"s ear, but her driver did not hear her.
Ahead and behind, other members of Kristal"s squad rode more of these dumpy little monsters. The Captain had allowed seven of the snowmobiles snowmobiles for the hunt, so some soldiers doubled up like herself and Kristal, while the lead troops, some distance in front, rode singly. for the hunt, so some soldiers doubled up like herself and Kristal, while the lead troops, some distance in front, rode singly.
Kristal glanced west. The visibility was fair but Leela saw nothing.
Kristal made a swift motion with one hand though and Leela realised they were slowing, veering around to an eventual halt. Past the trees the ground fell away fairly steeply and the open terrain below looked like a giant thumbprint stamped in the mountain. A gentler hill dropped into the bowl at the north and Kristal"s gaze was trained there as she hopped from her seat. Leela dismounted to stand beside her.
Her nose wrinkled and she pulled a strand of hair under her nose for a tentative sniff.
"Smell like a tailpipe, huh?" It was the big sergeant tramping up, carrying the large gun with its jingling ribbon of bullets.
"What is a tailpipe?"
"You"re really quite a girl, you know that?"
Leela did not know what to say to that.
"Ignore him," Kristal advised her, still watching the far hill.
"Hey, I love that smell of gas. Never get enough."
"Marotta." she spared him a fleeting scowl, "when you"re done sweet-talking Leela here, take Landers and two of the guys a couple of hundred yards up. Move down slope and hide yourselves in the open down there. Hide yourselves good."
"You got it, Kris - Lieutenant."
"With any luck, we can take our man alive. I"m sure he"s the one blew his way out of the parlour window." She closed her eyes and breathed in, long and deep. "He"s three minutes off from that north ridge. Get moving."
Sergeant Marotta headed off at a trot, collecting his chosen team. Kristal looked back and motioned the others to move up, even as she dropped to her knees. Leela followed her example, and inched closer to the scout"s side.
She searched along the crest of the hill. "I do not understand, Kristal. Do you see this man in your mind?"
"I see him. And I feel him in the pulse of the land. Besides, he has the Stormcore."
Leela was wary of troubling her friend further, but felt com-pelled: "What is the Stormcore?"
Ben McKim was the new kid on the block. Just over a year with this outfit, and he"d figured it was one of the reasons he"d drawn guard duty on the vehicles back there.
It was dumb speculation really, because ultimately every outfit was the same: you had to work lights and scenery if you wanted to make centre stage. Now, posted at the house, left behind again, he couldn"t decide whether he was being given the b.u.m"s rush or his shot at the Oscar. On the face of it there wouldn"t be a lot to do here besides more waiting.
Unless some cultist stragglers started rolling in - which was doubtful McKim saw his two sharpshooters stepping through the front doorway. He"d called them in from the perimeter and they"d probably jogged all the way, although they both had their breathing under good control. Falvi was being funny, wiping his feet.
Falvi and Barnes, each a head shorter than him. They took to the waiting game like they were on a diet of time and boredom. "Glad you could make it, people. Welcome to the House of the Dead. Find yourselves a room, high as you can go, one each flank of the house. I want every approach covered far as the eye can see."
At least, he added with a look, as far as anyone can see in what pa.s.sed for weather in the Granite State.
"You got it, sir," the young man, Falvi, acknowledged and the two of them were vanishing up those stairs like they were keen to start the next round of waiting ASAP. ASAP.
He let them go and moved on to the lounge. He"d seen tidier craters, but his grenadier, Pelham, had shovelled enough trash off a sofa so he could lay back. Eastman kicked the guy"s boot and stood to attention. McKim signalled her to rest easy.
He ran through the list, checking it off: snipers up top, three-man patrol stalking the fences, two at the downstairs windows, three - including himself - grabbing some rest and cleaning weapons. It was a system of sorts and they were wired for action, looking out for it; something the cultists hadn"t been doing. It bothered him, the way these amateurs had been about as heavily armed as his squad, give or take a grenade launcher.
And where did all that firepower get them? n.o.body knew.
Not even Joanna, and she was probably the smartest on this crew. Except for the newcomer, maybe.
But Captain Shaw was not going to come back up the mountain to find White Shadow guns lying smoking on these floors, the men and women of Ben McKim"s team only a cold memory. Not a chance in h.e.l.l.
He made that promise to the walls right there and then. He made it in silence so neither Eastman nor Pelham could hear the worry on which it was founded.
"You know, usually in any investigation I try to leave no stone unturned."
"That"s a commendable work ethic, Doc. Shows dedication."
"Yes, but it"s also very time-consuming when you find yourself in a quarry as often as I do."
The Doctor let the edged comment ride a while, waiting for it to pierce Captain Shaw"s military hide. He was a shrewd young officer and it wouldn"t take very long. Not long at all.
The Doctor could ignore the constant jostling. It was, he decided, like riding the London tube during rush hour, except the Snowcat wasn"t as cramped or filthy. The cabin lights on, it might have been night outside: white night. The snows had started in again, spattering softly on the panes and dying slow deaths as they met the warm air heating the interior.
Captain Shaw leaned forward in his seat. "Doc, believe me, I want to help you turn over every stone, but you"ve got to realise, the Stormcore isn"t my baby. I"m just the sitter."
"But you were supervising an experiment, Captain. Some ambitious project using extraterrestrial technology."
That had the others sitting up: Lieutenant Beard and the other soldier sharing this ride. The driver up front was well beyond earshot, with the constant rumble of the engine, not to mention the shake and rattle of the cha.s.sis to contend with.
"Who told you that?"
"The tooth fairy. Does it matter? The important thing you have to ask yourself is am I a spy and since the answer is no, can you really afford not to let me in on your little secrets?"
"Captain," Lieutenant Beard offered a warning note.
"It"s okay, Derm. The Doc and I understand one another."
The Doctor decided this wasn"t much like a tube ride after all. There wasn"t even a sense of a tunnel wall slipping by outside. There were the window panes, all around, and then the world stopped. The substance was here in their conversation and this young fellow"s remarkable will. He decided he rather liked this Captain Shaw.
"See, I have this problem with you, Doc. I believe what you say you are, as far as it goes. Don"t get me wrong, if I had the comms to run extensive extensive checks, I would. Now, I want your help and you"re no use to me working blindfold, but I can"t afford to let anything I tell you find its way back to Geneva, you know?" checks, I would. Now, I want your help and you"re no use to me working blindfold, but I can"t afford to let anything I tell you find its way back to Geneva, you know?"
"It"s a terrible pickle to be in," sympathised the Doctor.
"I"m not about to put my career on the line here, so I figure, I tell you only only what you need to know and if any of it gets talked about in UNIT circles, I"m going to point my finger in your direction. There"s going to be no culpability for my people and as far as my bosses are concerned, you, Doc, are a dangerous masterspy. I"m going to paint you as a James Bond with a twist of lime and they"re going to come after you, wherever you roam, and they"re going to poke laser designators through your bathroom window" what you need to know and if any of it gets talked about in UNIT circles, I"m going to point my finger in your direction. There"s going to be no culpability for my people and as far as my bosses are concerned, you, Doc, are a dangerous masterspy. I"m going to paint you as a James Bond with a twist of lime and they"re going to come after you, wherever you roam, and they"re going to poke laser designators through your bathroom window"
Really? All that attention, just for me?" The Doctor held his grin for a moment, and then leaned forward seriously, glad the preamble was over. "Now, what about this Stormcore?"
"For my people, the Owl is a wise and friendly spirit, possessed of powerful love medicine. But among the Sioux, Hin-Han the Owl guards the entrance to the Milky Way, the river of stars" - Kristal swept a hand overhead - "over which the souls of the dead must pa.s.s in order that they might reach the spirit land." She waited, and she looked pleased to see Leela so engrossed. "When they first asked me to touch the device and divine its purpose, I felt I had climbed upon the wings of Hin-Han and he showed me the world and the Milky Way and the endless expanse of other galaxies."
"And did he show you the spirit world, across the Milky Way?"
Kristal smiled, the river of stars running to the horizon behind her gaze, asking her to join the scout in her memories. But Leela did not know how to take up the invitation.
"My superiors wanted something a little more concrete than that. They dabbled in what they call psychic forces, but any suggestion of the spirit world was more than they could stomach. So I had to answer them in the language of science."
Leela recalled Neeva"s claims of communion with the Great One, and how the Doctor had showed her that, then too, the magic of the Tesh was involved; the magic that was not magic. She did not believe Kristal was a charlatan charlatan like Neeva. like Neeva.
"Unfortunately, it was not Hin-Han"s wings I rode, but those of a ship from another world. But, yes, Leela, I saw far across the Milky Way. The Stormcore is the key to the spirit world - and a thousand other universes my ancestors never dreamed of. And the government had no idea what to do with that kind of power."
She looked out across the landscape and Leela saw her eyes tighten.
Tracing her line of sight to the north, she picked out the lonely figure in a blundering run, a bundle clutched to his chest like a baby at a mother"s breast.
"There he is. Come on."
See, Kristal told them the device was a navigation system, because that was the closest term, she said, that they"d be happy with. She told them it navigated not only between the stars, but all the universes between the stars. Including a direct channel through to all those psychic forces they"d been studying for so long. So naturally they were pretty excited, hence they gave their star pupil a front row seat on the project as soon as they"d figured out what they were going to do with their find."
The Doctor pondered a while. "Hm. Sounds to me like a variety of multidimensional navigational system. Not something you"d find on any common-or-garden s.p.a.cecraft." He fixed Captain Shaw with an inquisitive scowl. "You know, I have to wonder if this UFO UFO of yours crashed or had the slightly greater misfortune of being shot down?" of yours crashed or had the slightly greater misfortune of being shot down?"
"Sir, the Captain told you," Lieutenant Beard broke in for the first time, "we"re just the baby-sitters. Neither the NSA nor the CIA are about to tell us whether the Air Force shot down some alien s.p.a.cecraft twenty or thirty years ago, and we aren"t about to ask. The folks down at Fort Meade came up with the project, a.s.signed their staff and dropped it in our lap. We"re all on the same side, different departments is all.
That"s just the way it works."
The Doctor saw Morgan Shaw trying on a smirk for size, to see how he liked that. He leaned back in his seat and regarded the two officers, letting the rocking and the growl of the vehicle answer on his behalf.
Emilie Jacks could never have said she loved Crayford Boyle.
He"d had something miraculous and he"d shared it with her, that was all. But once shared, it had become hers too, and she couldn"t get over how he"d surrendered it so easily. All for what? Fear?
She spat to one side. Time to step up the pace for the final few yards. Her muscles were burning but that kind of pain only made her feel better.
Fear was made for giving, not receiving.
One man broken and everything lay in ruins. Everything she"d signed up for, everything they"d worked for. Now she was left with Lagoy in tow. G.o.d Almighty, of all the possible survivors, Mitch Lagoy. Not exactly The Omega Man. The Omega Man.
Jacks looked back over her shoulder to make sure Lagoy was sticking close.
He was panting like a G.o.dd.a.m.n polar bear. Plenty of insulation on him, but he was one h.e.l.l of a risk when it came to covert ops. She felt like ordering him on ahead, draw the enemy fire, but she figured he must be smart enough to question a command like that.
When she"d first enlisted with Crayford, Lagoy was already in situ, a trusted man in the ranks. The guy was a slob though, never been near the military. A bank robber, for Christ"s sake. Okay, he"d never been caught (and Crayford had run enough background checks to confirm that) but Jacks always looked at it this way: Lagoy hadn"t made a million either.
The trees were starting to thin some. Jacks. .h.i.t the snow on her belly and she waved Lagoy down behind her. Gun held off the snow, she started scuttling on her elbows, to a few yards shy of the treeline.
Hopefully Lagoy was doing the same, but she didn"t have the time or patience to keep checking on him every two seconds. Snaking up, she peered over a mound of snow, ready to meet a soldier"s boot, the muzzle of a rifle or anything.
She saw the house: a short dash down a shallow gradient.
They"d followed the arc of the woods, a safe distance in, and this was about the furthest the treeline extended.
There were three soldiers. Not easy to see, but they were there. They weren"t straying far from the house, following a tight circuit out by the broken fence, more to keep warm than cover the terrain. The two old trucks, cannibalised for spares not long after they"d arrived, guarded the main line of Emilie"s planned approach.
"We"ll take a breather for a second. There"s not much ground to cross here, but I want to be sure there aren"t any more patrols." Even as she said it, she knew she was sounding pleased with herself. And she kind of expected that would get a rise out of Lagoy.