‘We can’t protect everyone at all five sites. People are going to die.’ Amanda said through gritted teeth.
‘And with the death of Walters and your presence here, we have proof that dead people can be replaced. Are there any other simple concepts that you would like explained to you before you get on with your job?’ Asher asked.
Asher turned to leave. Safiya and Hank stayed put. Asher turned back to them, clearly furious.
‘You two with me, now!’ he snapped.
‘You’re going to keep two of my detail with you?!’ Amanda said, incredulously. Asher just looked at her as if she was a moron. ‘Doctor, I need at least one of them with me.’
‘Already your incompetence is annoying me. It only takes a phone call…’ He left the rest of the threat about her cousin and their family in the upstate New York refugee camp unsaid.
‘You need to be careful that you don’t push so hard that the other person feels that they’ve got nothing left to lose,’ Amanda told him. Asher started going red again, furious.
‘You, inbreed,’ he finally said to Hank. ‘Stay with her.’
‘Yes sir,’ Hank said mildly.
Amanda would have preferred Safiya, and she didn’t like the way that Asher was looking at the attractive French/Algerian contractor. She did, however, have perfect confidence in Safiya’s ability to look after herself.
Asher left.
‘So, he seems nice,’ Amanda muttered. Mikey laughed, Alan and Hank smiled.
She had gathered them all in site A. They were sat just behind one of the light rigs, in a circle. Okobe, Daniels and Schmidt had all greeted her warmly. Genuinely pleased that she was with them again.
‘You’re supposed to be like plod, aye?’ Kearney asked. He was a wiry, thuggish-looking kid from somewhere called Wolverhampton in Britain. Apparently he’d ended up in CELL due to the UK’s Penal Conscription Act. Amanda found this a little strange. She had thought that conscripts under the act were supposed to end up in Britain’s actual military, not as corporate military contractors.
Amanda narrowed her eyes at Kearney and just shook her head in bewilderment. His accent was almost impossible to understand.
She’d secured her body armour and was wearing a holstered Hammer II automatic pistol on her hip. She was in the process of reassembling and checking her Alpha Jackal combat shotgun. She had just attached the fore grip to the mounting rails under the barrel and was in the process of attaching a flashlight to the mounting rails on the side of the weapon.
‘He wants to know if you’re police,’ Daniels translated for her. He was another Brit, who’d served with the Royal Engineers. He was a middle-aged man going to seed. If CELL had any sense he would have been working for them servicing vehicles and weapons, but in a very military show of logic he’d ended up carrying a Grendel in a security detail.
‘I used to be an MP,’ Amanda told Kearney.
‘So you gonna’ investigate this?’
‘It’s not an investigation, it’s a hunt. It doesn’t matter who or what did this or why, we just need to find it and kill it. And I’ve got some bad news for you, kid.’ Kearney narrowed his eyes. ‘Go and relieve Safiya and send her back here.’
The young British kid opened his mouth to protest but Daniels looked over at him and just shook his head. The kid remained quiet and headed over to where the doctor was looking over some findings.
‘We going into the caves?’ Coyle asked, sounding worried. Coyle was another of the new guys. An American who had served in a tank regiment. He had the look of a soldier who’d stopped caring about himself, or anything else for that matter.
‘We’d just get lost unless we’ve got solid intel as to its whereabouts.’
‘Do you know what this place is?’ Alan asked Amanda. Amanda laughed.
‘I got put on a transport flight from Lagos. I wasn’t even told I was going to St. Petersburg.’ There was some laughter from around the circle.
‘Asher talks openly in front of us. He thinks anyone carrying a gun is a mental sub-normal who wouldn’t understand what he’s talking about.’
‘Yeah, he’s a charmer alright,’ Amanda said. ‘So?’
‘He thinks this is part of a birthing chamber. Somewhere below here are Ceph, or things that will become Ceph, or at the very least some of their tech, just like New York.’
‘Nice. So if one of them is awake…’ Amanda asked as she slid the extended magazine into the Jackal.
‘Then they’re probably trying to find a way to wake the others.’
‘And we end up with another New York right here in St. Petersburg.’
‘Which won’t matter to us,’ Daniels said. ‘Because we’ll be overwhelmed immediately.’ He had been with them in New York. He’d seen what the Ceph could do.
‘I just want some payback for Sam,’ Okobe muttered. There were nods from Mikey and Schmidt as well. Okobe was ex-Nigerian army. He was tall, rake thin but somehow still powerful looking. Normally quiet but he had been close to Sam and it looked like her death had hit him hard. Amanda reached out and grabbed the Nigerian’s arm. She had liked Sam as well.
A harried-looking Safiya joined them.
‘I’ve only got a little while, he’s less than pleased at the swap,’ she told them. There were some angry mutterings.
‘Okay, ideas?’ Amanda said.
‘Claymores?’ Daniels suggested.
‘Do you have any?’ Amanda asked. Daniels shook his head. ‘Probably for the best. We can’t have some junior xeno-archaeologist spread themselves all over the local area.’
‘It might catch Asher,’ Schmidt suggested. There was more laughter. Schmidt had been a tank gunner in the German army. The German looked after himself. His flattop blonde hair and blue eyes made him look like the Aryan ideal. His appearance was at odds with his apparently generous and friendly nature.
‘We’ve got five caverns to cover, not to mention intervening tunnels, and Asher wants all the sites up and running. Even one person per cavern, we’re going to struggle if we want to sleep and someone’s going to have to stay with Asher and hold his hand,’ Mikey pointed out. Amanda was already shaking her head.
‘We rotate whomever’s on that fat fuck so Safiya’s skin doesn’t crawl off on its own.’ There were a few more chuckles. Safiya’s laughter seemed forced. ‘Six on, three off, staggered sixteen hour shifts,’ Now there were groans. ‘The three off sleep here in the main cavern. The other six work in two patrols of three, working round all five sites. None of us go anywhere unless we have two others with us, clear?’ There were nods from the others.
‘That’s still pretty thin,’ Alan pointed out.
‘Give me an option. I’m guessing that Sam and Walters were both on their own?’ There were nods from around the circle. ‘What are comms like?’
‘They’ve got transceivers attached to the walls of the tunnels. Basically you’ve got good coverage at the five sites and the tunnels directly between, but get off the beaten track and it’s for shit,’ Hank told her.
‘You thinking cameras?’ Daniels asked. Amanda nodded.
‘And I want the cameras streaming to phones carried by each patrol. Can you do that?’
Daniels was nodding.
‘I should be able to sort something, though I can’t promise total coverage.’
Amanda knew it was busy work. She was just giving them something to do. They were glad that someone was here making decisions, and that that person could do a good impression of competence.
The cameras might help but she was of the opinion that it would be the Stalker, or whatever Ceph monstrosity that was down there with them, that would set the tempo of their hunt. Unless they could divine a purpose and work out its whereabouts, or when it was going to strike, they were just going to be reacting.