“Look out for yourselves,” he mumbled, embarrassed at what he was saying, as they walked down the plank to the jungle.
“Thank you, Len,” Darcy said. “We will. Just make sure you’re here when we get back.” He pulled the hood over his head.
Len raised a hand. The air around the Edenists turned impenetrably black, flowing like oily smoke around their bodies. Then they were gone. He could hear their feet squelching softly in the mud, slowly fading into the distance. A sudden chill breeze seemed to rise out of the cloying jungle humidity, and he hastened back into the galley. Those chameleon suits were too much like magic.
Four kilometres through the jungle in the dead of night.
It wasn’t too bad, their retinal implants had low-light and infrared capability. Their world was a two-tone of green and red, shot through with strange white sparkles, like interference on a badly tuned holoscreen. Depth perception was the trickiest, compressing trees and bushes into a flat mantle of landscape.
Twice they came across sayces on a nocturnal prowl. The animals’ hot bodies shone like a dawn star amongst the lacklustre vegetation. Each time, Darcy killed them with a single shot from his maser carbine.
Lori’s inertial guidance block navigated them towards the village, its bitek processor pumping their coordinates directly into her brain, giving her the mindless knowledge and accuracy of a migratory bird. All she had to watch out for was the lie of the land; even the most exhaustive satellite survey couldn’t reveal the folds, rillets, and gullies that hid below the treetops.
Two hundred metres from the edge of Ozark’s clearing, their green and red world began to grow lighter. Lori checked through Abraham high overhead, keeping the bird circling outside the clearing. There were a number of fires blazing in open pits outside the cabins.
Seems pretty normal,she told darcy.
From here, yes. Let’s see if we can get in closer and spot any of the sheriffs and their weapons.
OK. One minute, I’ll bring Kelven in. We’ll update him as we go.in case anything happens and we don’t get back, that way they’ll have some record—but she tried not to think that. She ordered her communication block to open a channel to the naval ELINT satellite. The unit had a bitek processor, so the conversation wouldn’t be audible.
We’re at Ozark village now,she told the navy commander.
Are you all right?kelven solanki asked.
Yes.
What’s your situation?
Right now we’re on our hands and knees about a hundred metres from the fields around the village. There are several fires burning in the village, and a lot of people moving round for this time of night. There must be three or four hundred of them outside, can’t be many in the cabins. Apart from that it looks pretty ordinary.she wormed her way forward through the tangle of long grass and creepers, avoiding the bushes. Darcy was a metre to her left. It had been a long time since her last fieldcraft training session, she was moderately pleased by how little noise she was making.
Kelven, I want you to datavise a list of the sheriffs the BK133s landed at Ozark,darcy said. We’ll see if we can identify any of them.
Right away, here they come.
Lori pressed the twigs of a low-hanging branch to the ground, and slithered over them. There was the trunk of a large mayope four metres ahead, its roots sloping up out of the soil. Light from the fires fluoresced the bark to a lurid topaz.
The list of sheriffs streamed into her mind; facts, figures, and profiles, most importantly the holograms. Mirages of seventy men shimmered over the vapid low-light image of Ozark. Lori reached the mayope trunk and looked out over the lines of seedy cabins, trying to match the visual patterns in her mind with what she could see.
There’s one,darcy said. his mind indicated one of the men squatting in a circle of people around a fire. Some kind of animal carcass was roasting above the flames.
And another,lori indicated.
They swiftly located a further twelve sheriffs at various fires.
None of them look particularly concerned that their communications with Candace Elford have been cut off,she said.
Have they been sequestrated?kelven solanki asked.
There’s no way of knowing for sure, but my best guess is yes,darcy said. Given their current situation, their behaviour is abnormal. They should at least have posted a perimeter guard.
The bitek processor in Lori’s back-up communication block reported a power loss in the unit’s electron-matrix crystal. She automatically ordered the reserve crystal to be brought on line, the thought was virtually subconscious.
I concur,lori said. I think our original primary goal of verifying Laton’s presence is irrelevant in these circumstances.
Seconded. We’ll attempt to seize one of these people and bring them back to Durringham for examination.the mimetic governor circuitry on Darcy’s chameleon suit indicated a databus glitch in his right leg; alternative channels were brought on line by the master processor.
Our best bet will be that cabin there, it’s reasonably isolated, and I saw someone go in just now.lori evinced a five-room building standing apart from the others. It was a hundred and twenty metres from the edge of the jungle, but the intervening ground was mostly allotments, providing as much cover as the trees. She took an image enhancer out of a pouch on her waist, and brought it up to her eyes. Bloody thing’s broken. Try yours, we need to know how many are inside.
Darcy’s chemical/biological agent detector shut down. It hasn’t broken,he said in consternation. We’re in some kind of electronic warfare field!
Damn it!lori’s back-up communicator and target-laser-acquisition warning sensors dropped out. Kelven, did you hear that? They’re using highly sophisticated electronic warfare systems.
Your signal strength is fading,kelven said.
Darcy felt his affinity link with his maser carbine’s controlling processor vanish. When he looked at the gun its LCD display panel was dead. Come on, move it! Back to the Coogan.
Darcy!
He twisted round to see five people standing in a semicircle right-behind them. One woman, four men. All of them with strange placid smiles; dressed like settlers in denim trousers and cotton shirts, the men with thick beards. Even with shock paralysing his nerves he retained enough presence of mind to glance at his own arm. Infrared showed him a faint pink outline, but low-light simply revealed long blades of grass. The chameleon circuitry was still functional.
“Shit!” Kelven, they can see chameleon suits. Warn your people. Kelven?the hardware units he wore round his waist were all failing in rapid succession, affinity filling his mind with processor caution warnings. They started to wink out. There was no reply from Kelven Solanki.
“You must be the pair Laton called,” one of the men said. He looked from Lori to Darcy. “You can get up now.”
The power supply to Lori’s chameleon suit ebbed to nothing, and the fabric reverted to its natural dull grey. She rolled to one side and stood in one smooth motion. Implant glands were feeding a gutsy brew of hormones into her blood supply, hyping her muscles. She dropped both her maser carbine and the image enhancer, freeing her hands. Five wouldn’t be a problem. “Where do you come from?” she asked. “I’m talking to you that’s in charge of them. Is your origin in your memory?”
“You’re an atheist,” the woman replied. “It would be kinder to spare you the answer.”
Take them out,darcy said.
Lori stepped forwards, turning, arms and legs moving fast. Left ankle swinging into the man’s kneecap with her full bodyweight behind it—satisfying crackle of breaking bone; right hand chopping the woman’s larynx, slamming her Adam’s apple into her vertebrae. Darcy was wreaking similar mayhem on his targets. Lori spun round on one foot, left leg kicking out again, back arching supplely, and her boot’s toecap caught a man just below and behind his ear, splitting his skull.