Nevers stood a little way off, looking towards a faint smudged glow at the horizon. After a little while he came over and squatted beside Vic and asked him what he thought the weird light was.
‘The pilot said it was some kind of static discharge.’
‘Perhaps.’
‘Is your friend telling you different?’
‘I don’t have a spooky connection with him, if that’s what you’re thinking. It doesn’t work like that.’
‘Right. Powered by eidolons.’
‘I believe he’ll find plenty of those where we’re heading.’
‘He’d better. Because if there’s any trouble, he’ll have to do most of the heavy lifting. I haven’t ever fired a gun in anger, not even back in the good old Wild West days.’
‘My friend is ready to help in any way he can,’ Nevers said. ‘As am I.’
The cold of the stone was seeping into Vic’s behind, but he was too tired to care. He could sit here and let Nevers and the Jackaroo avatar do their thing. Whatever it was. Nothing good, that was for sure. Vic had confiscated the wire that generated the avatar and zipped it into the inner pocket of his jacket, and he was pretty sure that it had something to do with the feeling that something was following them. He was in control right now, but his rifle and pistol wouldn’t do much good against an alien ghost, and he suspected that Nevers would do anything to stop the bad guys getting hold of whatever it was they were hunting, and that he’d take Vic down too, if it came to it.
‘Don’t forget that we’re here only to collect evidence,’ Vic said. ‘We sneak in and we see what’s what and document it and we get out. That’s it. We can deal with the bad guys later.’
That was what he’d told Nevers before they’d set out, but even he didn’t really believe it now. Truth was, he’d never really believed it.
Nevers shook a couple of tablets into his palm and dry-swallowed them.
Vic said, ‘Is your arm giving you trouble?’
‘It’s fine. Why don’t you let me carry that kitbag for a while? We can’t have far to go now.’
‘I can manage. Well, maybe I need a hand to get to my feet…’
They went on. Nevers was keyed up, getting ahead of Vic and waiting impatiently for him to catch up. Vic plodded on, remembering how light he’d felt when he’d first arrived. He had long ago grown accustomed to Mangala’s gravity, but Nevers had an eager bounce in his step. It made Vic uneasy.
They passed through another regiment of stacked stones, some in close clusters, others spaced in long lines. Vic’s feeling that he was being stalked returned; when a shadow appeared in the haze, off to the left, a bolt of panic snapped through him and he stupidly unslung his rifle. He stood his ground as the shape grew larger and more distinct: a low-slung biochine the size of a large dog stumping along on three pairs of legs, a stiff spiky tail stuck out behind. It was mostly yellow, blotched with triangles of deep orange and rust.
Vic tracked it with his rifle as it went past and vanished into the haze.
‘An actual alien beast,’ Nevers said. The bastard sounded delighted.
‘They’re mostly harmless,’ Vic said, although he wasn’t sure what kind of biochine it was. Nothing he’d seen before, but he was a long way from home…
He slung his rifle on his shoulder and they walked on. Hazy glimpses of more biochines moving through the murk. Disturbed by the oncoming storm perhaps, except they seemed to be headed into it, moving in the same direction as Vic and Nevers, towards the smudge of skyglow. Once, a swarm of rat-sized things chittered past on long angular legs, scrambling over rocks, gone before Vic had properly registered their presence.
And then Nevers suddenly stopped and crouched down. Vic plodded up to him, discovered the abrupt edge of a low cliff that curved away on either side as if some giant had taken a bite from the land. Another impact crater, maybe.
The cliffs were footed in fans of fallen rocks. Beyond, level ground stretched into the haze beneath silky ribbons of frozen light. Vic scanned the scene with his field glasses. The dim shapes of a couple of flat-topped mounds. A biochine as big as a car trundling towards them. The rocky margin of the river, and there, yes, a cluster of tents. Vanishing as a scud of dust blew past, reappearing. Orange and blue in the sere landscape.
A flicker of movement off to his left: three bright red spiny footballs rolled over the edge and fell to the rocks below.
‘Something is drawing those things here,’ Nevers said.
‘I see tents, but I can’t see any people. Then again, I can hardly see anything in this shit.’
‘If we aren’t going to move closer, perhaps my friend can find out something.’
‘We’ll try something else first,’ Vic said, and unbuckled the kitbag and drew out an aluminium case and snapped it open.
The quadcopter nested in black foam padding was the shape of a flying saucer and the size of a dinner plate, with four fans caged beneath it and a pair of stereoscopic cameras in a fixed housing. Vic unpacked the joystick control and tablet display and switched on the little machine. It rose up, hovering at eye level and transmitting an image of himself and Nevers to the tablet in his lap.
‘I need you to spot for me,’ Vic said, and handed Nevers his pair of binoculars. ‘Guide me in towards those tents, out at about eleven o’clock. Tell me if I get too low to the ground or too close to some rock.’
He rubbed his hands together, took a breath, and sent the little quadcopter out above the edge of the cliff. An updraught caught it and knocked it sideways; it tilted and spun before its autogyro routine kicked in and stabilised it.
‘Try not to fly it into the ground,’ Nevers said.
‘Just point me at those tents,’ Vic said. ‘I’ll do the rest.’
He flew high at first, yo-yoing in the gusty wind, views of the ground pitching and spinning on the screen, half the time showing only sky. It was a lot harder than he remembered, back when he’d used drones to stake out drug corners. Beside him, Nevers gave terse instructions, and at last the orange and blue blooms of the tents appeared on the tablet’s screen.
Vic painstakingly edged the drone towards them.
‘No sign of anyone at home,’ he said, after a couple of minutes spent trawling about.
‘You might want to head to the left,’ Nevers said. ‘I thought I saw some activity around one of those mounds.’
Vic kicked the drone higher and spun it around, saw what Nevers meant.
Things were stalking and crawling and humping around the perimeter of the mound as if on patrol. Things were standing here and there like sentries — Vic was reminded of a documentary he’d seen about meerkats, although these dark spiky sentries were in no way cute. He saw a shallow trench and guided the quadcopter towards it, saw a small opening in the side of the mound.
‘Looks like someone has been busy,’ he said.
‘Perhaps the bad guys are trapped inside,’ Nevers said. ‘Can you get the drone any closer?’
‘I don’t want to get too low, in case one of those biochines takes a swipe at it,’ Vic said.
And someone else said, ‘You can stop wanking around with that toy, lads. Time to get real.’
Vic rolled over and sat up. Three men stood there. Two were aiming rifles at him and Nevers. The third was Cal McBride.
49. Downriver
Mangala | 28–29 July
‘No need to thank me for dealing with the man who killed your friend,’ the tall man with the ponytail, Danny Drury, told Chloe. ‘Billy had it coming. He had an attitude. Thought that because he’d been in the Paras he knew better than his boss. If you don’t make the same mistake, we’ll get along fine. Okay?’