Hands gripped at her arms from behind. Lori yelped in shock. Nobody should be there. But reflexes took over, a fast back-kick which connected with a thigh, and she completed the turn with her arms locking into a defensive posture in time to see the woman staggering back. She blinked in incomprehension. The woman had blood pouring out of her mouth, her throat was severely disfigured from the first blow. As she watched, the skin inflated out, Adam’s apple reappearing. The gush of blood stopped.
Sweet shit, what does it take to stop them?
The two men Darcy had knocked over were regaining their feet. One had a shattered shin bone, its jagged end protruding from the flesh just below his knee; he stood on it and walked forwards.
Electrodes,darcy ordered. the first of the men was reaching for him, the side of his face caved in where Darcy’s boot had impacted, eyeball mashed in its socket, shedding tears of syrupy yellow fluid, but still smiling. He deliberately stepped inside the groping embrace, bringing his hands up, fingers wide, and clamping his palms on either side of the man’s head. The long cords of eel-derived electroplaque cells buried in his forearms discharged through organic conductors that emerged from his fingertips in the form of tiny warts. The man’s head was crowned with a blinding flare of purple-white static accompanied by a gunshot crack as the full two-thousand-volt charge slammed into his brain.
A vicious tingling erupted across Darcy’s hands as some of the current leaked through the subcutaneous insulation. But the effect on the man was like nothing Darcy had ever seen before. The discharge should have felled him instantly, nothing living could withstand that much electricity. Instead he lurched backwards clutching at his mangled head, emitting a soprano keening. His skin began to glow, shining brighter and brighter. The shirt and jeans flamed briefly, falling away from the incandescent body as blackened petals. Darcy shielded his eyes with his hand. There was no heat, he realized, with a light so bright he ought to feel a scorch wave breaking across his chameleon suit. The man had become translucent now, so powerful was the surge of photons, revealing bones and veins and organs as deep scarlet and purple shadows. Their solidity dissolved, as if they were different coloured gases caught in a hurricane. He managed one last wretched wail as his body gave a massive epileptic spasm.
The light snuffed out, and the man fell flat on his face.
The other four assailants began to howl. Lori had heard a dog lamenting the death of its master once; their voices had that same bitter resentful grieving. She realized some of her hardware units were coming back on-line, the disruption effect was abating. Her chameleon suit circuitry sent psychedelic scarlet and green fireworks zipping over the fabric.
“Kelven!” she shouted desperately.
Alone in his darkened office a thousand kilometres away Kelven Solanki jerked to attention behind his desk as her static-jarred voice crashed into his neural nanonics.
“Kelven, he was right, Laton was right, there is some kind of energy field involved. It interfaces with matter somehow, controls it. You can beat it with electricity. Sometimes. Hell, she’s getting up again.”
Darcy’s voice broke in. “Run! Now!”
“Don’t let them gang up on you, Kelven. They’re powerful when they group together. It’s got to be xenocs.”
“Shit, the whole village is swarming after us,” Darcy called.
Static roared along the satellite link like a rogue binary blitzkrieg, making Kelven wince.
“Kelven, you must quarantine . . .” Lori never finished, her signal drowning below the deluge of rampaging whines and hisses. Then the racket ended.
TRANSPONDER SIGNAL DISCONTINUED, the computer printed neatly on Kelven’s desk screen.
“I told you we shouldn’t have come up here, didn’t I?” Gail Buchannan said. “Plain as day, I said no, I said you can’t trust Edenists. But you wouldn’t listen. Oh no. They just waved their fancy credit disk in front of your eyes, and you rolled over like a wet puppy. It’s worse than when she was on board.”
Sitting on the other side of the galley’s table, Len covered his eyes with his hands. The diatribes didn’t bother him much now, he had learnt to filter them out years ago. Perhaps it was one of the reasons they had stayed together so long, not from attraction, simply because they ignored each other ninety per cent of the time. He had taken to thinking about such things recently, since Marie had left.
“Is there any coffee left?” he asked.
Gail never even glanced up from her knitting needles. “In the pot. You’re as lazy as she was.”
“Marie wasn’t lazy.” He got up and walked over to the electric hotplate where the coffee-pot was resting.
“Oh, it’s Marie now, is it? I bet you can’t name ten of the others we ferried downriver.”
He poured half a mug of coffee and sat back down. “Neither can you.”
She actually stopped knitting. “Lennie, for God’s sake, none of them had this effect on you. Look at what’s happened to us, to the boat. What was so special about her? There must have been over a hundred brides in that bunk of yours down the years.”
Len glanced up in surprise. With her bloated features rendering her face almost expressionless it was difficult to know what went on behind his wife’s eyes, but he could tell how confused she was. He dropped his gaze to the steaming mug, and blew on it absently. “I don’t know.”
Gail grunted, and resumed her knitting.
“Why don’t you go to bed?” he said. “It’s late, and we ought to stay awake in shifts.”
“If you hadn’t been so eager to come here we wouldn’t have to mess our routine up.”
Arguing just wasn’t worth the effort. “Well, we’re here now. I’ll keep watch until midmorning.”
“Those damn Ivets. I hope Rexrew has every one of them shot.”
The lighting panel screwed into the galley’s ceiling began to dim. Len gave it a puzzled glance; all the boat’s electrical systems ran off the big electron-matrix crystals in the engine-room, and they were always kept fully charged. If nothing else, he did keep the boat’s machinery in good order. Point of honour, that was.
Someone stepped onto the Coogan ’s deck between the wheel-house and the long cabin. It was only the slightest sound, but Len and Gail both looked up sharply, meeting each other’s gaze.
A young-looking teenage lad walked into the galley. Len saw he was wearing a sheriff’s beige-coloured jungle jacket, the name Yuri Wilken printed on the left breast. Darcy had told him about the invaders using sequestration techniques. At the time he’d listened cynically; now he was prepared to believe utterly. There was a vicious wound on the lad’s throat, long scars of red tender skin all knotted up. A huge ribbon of dried blood ran down the front of his sleeveless shirt. He wore the kind of dazed expression belonging to the very drunk.
“Get off my boat,” Len growled.
Yuri Wilken parted his mouth in a parody of a smile. Liquid rasps emerged as he tried to speak. The lighting panel was flashing on and off at high frequency.
Len stood up and calmly walked over to the long counter fitted along the starboard wall.
“Sit,” Yuri grated. His hand closed on Gail’s shoulder. There was a sizzling sound, and her dress strap ignited, sending licks of yellow flame curling round his fingers. His skin remained completely unblemished.
Gail let out an anguished groan at the pain, her mouth yawning open. Wisps of blue smoke were rising from below Yuri’s hand as her skin was roasted. “Sit or she’s dead.”