The Eternal War (34 page)

Maddy waved her silent before she blurted anything that might sound rude.

‘Becks is very
special
,’ said Maddy quickly. ‘She’s not just a pretty face.’

Wainwright frowned. ‘Ma’am, I appreciate you come from a very different time to ours, but the arithmetic of the situation is still the same: twenty-four armed and well-trained British soldiers in there, and you expect one young lady is going to –’

‘Becks is a combat unit.’

Wainwright looked at her, frowning, stroking his chin. ‘A what?’

‘She’s a genetically engineered human with a silicon-wafer processor brain. She’s extremely tough, extremely strong and extremely quick. In short, she’s something of a killing machine.’

The colonel eyed her up and down. ‘Are you telling me this young lady is not –’

‘Not human.’ Maddy shrugged. ‘Not really.’

His eyes suddenly widened. ‘My God!’ he gasped. ‘Do you mean to say she’s a … a
eugenic
?’

Maddy shook her head. ‘I’m not really sure what those are, but I guess the best way to think of her is as an organic robot.’

‘
Robot?
I have not heard that word. What do you mean, ma’am?’

‘Robot … like, say, like a machine.’

‘Machine!’ He looked at her again. ‘But she is not constructed of metal and wires!’

‘No … no, she isn’t –’ Maddy shrugged – ‘but she might as well be.’

Wainwright’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. ‘You are not making sense, ma’am.’

‘Look … we’re wasting time here,’ said Maddy. ‘We need the communications hub, and we need it
intact
. Trust me,’ she smiled, ‘Becks can handle that.’

‘I will need guns,’ said Becks casually.

‘Of course you do,’ replied Maddy, patting her shoulder. ‘And I’m sure Colonel Wainwright here will give you all the guns you’ll need. Won’t you, Colonel?’

Wainwright looked at his men standing in several rows across the rubble-strewn assembly area. ‘You say … she … 
alone
can do this?’

‘Yup. Look, if she can punch out a dinosaur, I think she can manage a few soldiers.’

Wainwright stared at her for a moment. ‘Excuse me? Ma’am. I must have misheard you. I thought you just said –’

‘Your men, Colonel,’ cut in Becks, ‘could provide useful back-up. A perimeter round the bunker should be established to ensure no additional British troops are able to reinforce the garrison. What occurs
inside
the perimeter and inside the bunker –’ she produced a cool smile – ‘is best left to me.’

Maddy nodded. ‘Trust me. She’s right!’

Wainwright studied them both, not quite sure what to make of them. For sure, they were from some other world – their manner, their dress, the words they used – but this one girl taking a bunker on her own?

‘You look unconvinced, Colonel,’ said Maddy.

He looked over her shoulder at his men waiting patiently just out of earshot. ‘My men, myself … we have signed our death warrants. As of this moment, we are all dead men walking, unless – my friend, Colonel William Devereau, assures me – you truly have this machine that can rewrite our world with a better one.’

He cocked a thick eyebrow. ‘This is something I have to take on trust, since I have not seen this device. Nor for that matter has Colonel Devereau witnessed it working.’

‘It works,’ said Maddy, ‘otherwise Becks and I wouldn’t be standing here.’

He shrugged. ‘My point, ma’am, is that I have entrusted the lives of my men to the truth of your story. And now you ask that I trust that this young woman can make a successful assault on a defended position,
entirely on her own
?’

‘Affirmative,’ said Becks.

‘Look,’ said Maddy, ‘we don’t want to trash this place, right? So an extended gunfight is probably not a good thing. Becks is the alternative; you have to trust me. And look, if she fails –’ Maddy shucked a shoulder casually – ‘then you send your boys in. How about that?’

Wainwright turned to Becks. ‘You believe you can do this on your own?’

Becks trained her cool grey eyes on the Confederate colonel. ‘We should proceed directly. We are wasting valuable time.’

CHAPTER 63

2001, New York

Private Sutter stared across the rubble from his guard position: a short section of trench leading down four steps to the entrance to Defence Structure 76 – the official name for the communications bunker. He and the other lads on garrison duty were not meant to officially know it was a radio-signals hub for this section of the front line. Which was stupid, seeing as how the dish and antennae array were quite visible far above them, perched on the partially caved-in roof of the tall building beside the bunker. A twisted trunk of wires snaked down the open front of the building, from exposed floor to exposed floor, all the way down to the ground and into the bunker.

No, they weren’t meant to know what this place was, and it was drilled into them to refer to it only as Defence Structure 76. Should he ever be captured and interrogated by the enemy for intelligence, Defence Structure 76 could mean anything: a turret, a machine-gun emplacement, an artillery station.

Sutter shook his head. Not that those useless peasants in blue across the river were ever going to do much more than quiver in their boots and hunker down in their entrenched positions like cockroaches hiding in a dirty kitchen.

And perhaps they were right to quiver, Private Sutter mused. He’d heard from Lance-Corporal Davies, who’d heard whispers from someone working in regimental equipment procurement, that ‘something big’ was most certainly afoot. An offensive of some kind? Had to be.

All sorts of rumours were beginning to surface and the men in his platoon were itching for a scrap to get themselves stuck into. Playing at being security guards for a small concrete box that did little more than broadcast propaganda messages across this part of the line … well, that wasn’t the kind of soldiering Sutter had signed up for.

He leaned against the sandbags, bored, gazing down a track of cleared rubble. A track just about wide enough for a single vehicle and flanked on either side by banks of brick and debris and dust.

It had been an important road once. On the corner of the building beside him, he could make out a faded sign spotted with rust.

7TH AVENUE

Used to be one of New York’s main streets, he recalled someone telling him.

Doesn’t look like much now.

Through the open door to the bunker he could hear the muted clank of a kettle going on the stove, the click and clatter of dominoes being dealt, the dirty laugh of someone telling a joke they’d probably all heard a dozen times or more.

He sighed. Bored witless and missing afternoon tea as well. Marvellous. He was halfway through wondering whether one of the lads might actually think to bring him a mug of tea when he saw someone walking down the cleared track ahead.

A lone figure, it seemed. Yes. Just one … and, a little closer now, he could see it was a woman.

A woman? Private Sutter hadn’t seen a woman since he and the lads had replaced the last poor bunch of bored-witless guards three months ago. She was walking quite purposefully towards him.

Sutter grinned … A little female company. That’d be rather nice for a change.

He picked his white helmet up and put it on, tightened the strap beneath his chin and then took a step up the ladder and out of the trench so that he could be seen more clearly.

‘Halt!’ he called out to the woman, his carbine in his hands but aimed at the ground. She was hardly a threat, after all.

The woman kept walking purposefully towards him, oblivious to his challenge. Closer now, he could see she was wearing a Confederate-grey officer’s cape. More than that … he could see she was quite beautiful – the face of an angel, pale and smooth, long dark hair cascading down her shoulders.

‘Miss!’ he called out again, then almost apologetically: ‘I’m going to have to ask you to stop where you are!’

Her stride remained unbroken and now she was off the track and clambering up the bank of rubble towards him.

‘Miss! Please!’ He found himself reluctantly raising his carbine. ‘I need you to stop right where you are, love!’

Closer now, just a dozen yards, climbing steadily up skittering rubble towards him. She was smiling.

Sutter wondered whether this was a wind-up. Or perhaps a test. He knew this area of the line was being inspected for battle-readiness. If so, he’d already let this young lady get far too close. He was going to get a sharp rebuke if this was a test.

‘Halt or I shall fire!’ he challenged, angry with himself.

This time she did finally stop. Another six yards uphill, four or five more strides, and she’d have been right beside him.

‘Identify yourself!’ Sutter barked.

Her smile widened. ‘My name is Becks.’

Her cape flapped. He thought a breeze had caught it, lifted it. It was only as something glinted in the air between them that he understood it was the movement of her arms that had stirred the cape.

Sutter felt a punch in his throat that left him winded, gasping for air. He dropped the carbine, his hands reaching up to work out why his open mouth didn’t seem to be letting in a breath. Then he felt something odd sticking out. He looked down to see the hilt of a bayonet protruding from beneath his chin.

Right, I see
 … His foggy mind understood that he had a bayonet lodged in his throat.

He found himself sliding forward, dizzy-headed, slumped on to the sandbag in front of him. He looked up at the woman as she stepped carefully over him … She really was quite beautiful. She dropped down into the trench beside him and yanked the protruding blade from his throat.

Sutter gushed dark blood on to the sandbag.

Beautiful. She really is. Like an angel.
His mouth flapped open, blood spilling over his lips and down his chin as he tried to ask her if that’s what she was.

She smiled at him. ‘Please die quietly now,’ she said in an almost motherly way as she covered his mouth with her hand.

CHAPTER 64

2001, HMS Defiant

All she could see, staring up at the bunk above her,
all
she could see, were fleeting images of the bodies, large and small, lined up head to toe at the side of the street. Just like sacks of rubbish. Sal realized she didn’t really have a word that described how she felt right now. Empty? Hollow?

Is this
shock
I’m feeling? Am I in a state of shock?

The bunk creaked as Lincoln stirred on the mattress above. One booted foot hung over the side; he was far too long in the leg for these cramped bunks. She could hear the gentle thrum of far-off engines vibrating through the carrier’s hull, the quiet murmur of men along a passageway. The faint clang of pots and pans in a galley.

About thirty-six hours
 … That’s about all she remembered Liam saying as she and Lincoln were taken aboard the carrier and some army doctor quickly inspected them.

About thirty-six hours – he’d said something about the carrier picking up troops then heading north and they were getting a lift part of the way … and then, she was here, stretched out on this bunk in the vessel’s sickbay, and she suddenly realized how completely exhausted she felt. As if the mattress beneath her had somehow drained her of life; sucked the very blood from her veins and left a withered husk lying on top of it.

She saw their bodies … glassy-eyed, dead animal-human faces gazing up at the blue sky.

Samuel, his small ragged mouth hanging open, frozen in an uneven ‘O’ of terror.

She watched them being tossed on to the back of a vehicle like so many sacks of oatmeal. She heard one of the men say the bodies were to be ‘processed’ and fed to the huffaloes. Then she saw some other creatures, new types of eugenics: large shaggy bull-fronted animals with vaguely horse-like heads and slender hind quarters and dog-like creatures with heads that reminded her of baboons. Both types seemed to have the dull eyes of dim-witted beasts. Faces that lacked emotion or expression.

Not like Samuel and his fellow runaways. New breeds … ones less intelligent, less inquisitive, less likely to question their lot.

Controllable.

She closed her eyes reluctantly, too tired to keep them open, but knowing that against the smooth dark canvas of her eyelids she was going to see Samuel’s blood-spattered face once again.

‘Several stops, actually,’ said Captain McManus. ‘We’re collecting the rest of the regiment.’

‘The rest?’ Liam frowned. ‘There’s
more
of you on this … ship?’

‘Eight hundred and thirty-six, if my memory serves me. Six hundred and twenty-seven men and officers of the regiment. Twenty-four hunter-seekers and fifty huffaloes … and, of course, the carrier’s crew and support personnel – a hundred and twenty-three in total.’ He sipped his tea. ‘But we have three companies of men spread out across the Virginia countryside on various manoeuvres … patrols, peace-keeping.’ He smiled.

Peace-keeping?

The term didn’t sit well with what he’d witnessed earlier this morning.

‘When we’ve got them all aboard, we shall head north and set down outside New Wellington, New Jersey. It’s at the mouth of Lower New York Bay,’ said Captain McManus. ‘There’s a carrier dock there. We’ll be stopping to resupply the regiment and refuel the carrier before heading north again. You and your friends can get off there if you wish.’

Liam nodded. He’d noticed there was a buzz of activity going on aboard the ship: junior officers scurrying to and fro with clipboards under their arms. ‘Is there something happening?’

McManus looked up from his teacup. The officers’ mess was small, little more than a space for three bench tables and stools either side. The walls decorated with regimental trophies and grainy sepia group photographs of smiling young men in smart formal dress uniforms. Overhead, a glass chandelier swung gently from the low ceiling, tinkling softly from the vibration of the carrier’s engines.