As the tailgate swung down with a clatter, the boys jumped down, one by one, passing the backpacks down to each other, then began to unload the rest of their equipment from the storage area at the side of the carrier, working silently, efficiently, as a unit, while the guards looked on with eyes that saw but did not understand.
The blockhouse was an ugly, functional building. It rested against the outer wall of Eden like an undecorated clay box, its slit windows and single doorway like something a child might have drawn. Behind it, dwarfing it, the wall rose a further fifty metres into the cloudless sky, solid and black, stretching off into the distance on either side. Guard towers studded the top of that immense wall, every half kilometre of its length, their deadly lasers facing inwards. No one cared what went into Eden. The lasers were there to make sure that nothing came out.
In a long, low-ceilinged room inside the blockhouse, Daniel sat in the corner, looking on as the younger boys lovingly checked and re-checked their equipment. Leon, the twelve-year-old, looked nervy; he had an insular air that was not his normal cocky style. By comparison, Johann, the tall pallid eleven-year-old, seemed positively nerveless. Christian, his bunk mate, was smiling and whistling to himself as he checked the charge on his rifle, while Benoit simply sat on the edge of his chair, staring at his hands. Ju Dun, meanwhile, was limbering up, stretching his neck and shoulders, then his arms, flicking out his hands, warming up the muscles.
Everyone reacted differently to this. Everyone had their own way of coping, but Leon’s nerviness was worrying. Daniel knew he would have to watch that. As he looked across, Aidan came back into the room, trailed by Slaven. “Okay,” Aidan said. “They’ve given us a slot Two hours and we’re in.” Daniel saw how the boys looked to one another at the news. Excitement and fear were equally mixed in those looks. For some of them - Ju Dun, Benoit, Christian and Johann - this was their first time in, but even for Leon and Slaven this was only their second time, and the second time - as Daniel knew from experience - was the worst. It was all theoretical until you’d been inside, but they knew now what to expect Daniel stood. As he did, Aidan came across to him. Briefly he held his arm, then leaned close, whispering in his ear.
“I’m glad you’re here.”
Daniel smiled. Eden had changed them both. You did not go through it once, let alone five times, without it changing you. It made you appreciate things. Without it, Daniel would never have discovered the nowness of each living moment.He stared at Aidan’s face a moment longer, then gave a single nod, conscious of the others watching them.
From where it hovered just beneath the curved ceiling of the approach tunnel, the tiny OP unit sent back its signal to the Core. Other observation probes - none larger than a midge -floated nearby, some sending back wide-screen images of the waiting team, while others hovered much closer, their microscopic lenses peering through the darkened visors of the helmets, transmitting pictures of the individual boys’ expressions as zero hour approached.
Meanwhile, in the Core, a specially sealed vault at the centre of Eden, buried a hundred metres below the surface, a second team of analysts and strategists, sat watching a bank of screens and making notes.
Three hundred seconds now and counting.
From his seat in the gallery overlooking the operations room, Core Leader Dublanc looked on, his face expressionless, his gloved hands resting lightly on the tilted desk The faces of the eight boys showed in a single line at the centre of the wall of screens, Aidan’s to the left, Daniel’s to the far right They were looking good. Confident Their body signals were healthy: pulse rates, perspiration, blood pressure. Even Leon had settled now.
“If s looking great,” Dublanc said through his lip-mike, his voice booming through the speakers down below. “We’re going to scale up the first assault. Beef it up a little.”
There was a murmur at that, but no one argued. It was why they were here, after all; to test out the Man’s soldiers. To put them through their paces. On a single large screen to the right, the image sent back by the first probe dominated the room. It showed the eight boys standing in a group some five or six metres back from the Entrance Gate. They were dressed in full body armour, which glinted red-black in the half-light of the tunnel. Inside, it would change colour to match the backdrop, but right now it wasinactive. The group were heavily armed. Two had flamers, another two rocket-launchers. Two of them carried special battery packs - like huge, black plastic bricks - strapped to their sides, while Aidan and Daniel had a whole range of weapons attached to them. Each boy had two large semi-automatics - each weapon equipped with both munitions and laser functions - clipped to his back. All in all, the boys carried the fire-power of a small army.
The long, reinforced helmets the boys wore gave them a strange beetle-like look, accentuated by the five wedge-shaped neck-protector gorgets that extended from the back rim of the helmet to cover the shoulders and upper back. All wore armoured gauntlets and special flexible knee-length boots, part steel, part plastic. These boys could step on a mine and not lose a toe ... just so long as they didn’t do it twice.
Dublanc smiled. In their combat gear they finally looked what they were - soldiers. Age did not matter now, only experience, training and skill. And there were none more skilled than DeVore’s boy soldiers. “Show me Daniel.”
At once the individual images vanished, replaced by a single image of Daniel’s face, spread over all sixty-four screens.
Dublanc studied that face a long while; noting how those deep green eyes watched everything, the intelligence behind them considering the texture and form of all they saw, more like a machine than the machines themselves. He had noticed it before; had seen how quickly Daniel, of all of them, adapted to conditions - how he read the pattern of events and acted on it.
If they could get a machine to do that...
Boys came and went, and it was rare for him to recall one specifically, but he had known Daniel was special from the start He remembered standing there in the rain outside the entrance to the mine that day as the truck emerged into the daylight, grating along the iron rails with its freight of black-faced, exhausted boys. And there had been Daniel, standing at the front, watching, those bright green eyes staring out from his grimy face, meeting Dublanc’s gaze fearlessly as the truck clanked by.
He’d had the truck stopped there and then. Had stood there, his long coat wrapped tight about him against the cold, as his men took Daniel down and put him in the half-track. Even then Daniel had not been afraid. That had been the start of it That day in the rain.
“Give me Aidan.”
The image changed. Aidan’s face now filled the bank of screens. As the technicians and observers watched, Aidan turned to face his team, smiling broadly, nervelessly.
“We’re the best,” Aidan said, rousing the younger boys. “That” s why the Man has given us this chance. And we’re gonna make it through, right?” “Right? came the resounding reply.
“We’re gonna blast them and paste them!” Aidan said, clearly relishing the thought “We’re going to blow three different kinds of shit out of the little bastards, right?”
“Right!”
“But most of all,” Aidan said, his voice changing, becoming subtler, conspiratorial, “we’re gonna out-think those little fuckers ... right?” “Right,” came the more sober response.
Daniel smiled, then looked down at the gun he was holding, his thumb stroking the casing of the big semi-automatic with an almost loving care. It fired shells and grenades, but it was best used as a laser. With it, he could pick the eye out of a fly at fifty metres.
There was a low hum, the vibration barely discernible at first, and then it rose up the scale until it was a finely-tuned note; a middle C. At the same time the whole of the great circle of the doorway turned green. The two half-circles of the doors hissed back into the wall. Revealed was an inner room, lit by red strip lights - an airlock - and on the far side of it the door that led through into Eden.