Arcadian Genesis (alex hunter) Read online

  Millinov spoke into the microphone: ‘Proceed.’

  Anatoly looked toward the camera, his face still pale behind the visor. He nodded, a little jerkily, and then motioned with the forceps toward one of the shapeless blobs hanging from the side of the capsule. He paused again.

  I know… they’re ugly, aren’t they, my friend? Millinov zoomed in on Anatoly’s selection. Up close, the things were even less appealing, if that were possible — the gray glutinous mass had a darker center, like an internal organ or central nervous system.

  Anatoly lifted the forceps and Yelena held out the jar. Millinov blinked. Did the darker inner mass of the blob shift toward them? It was as if it were focusing, like an eye. Anatoly shuddered.

  He glanced questioningly at Yelena, who motioned with the jar. Millinov could imagine what she was thinking: let’s get this over with, and get out of here. Anatoly reached forward with the forceps.

  At that moment, the blob slid down the side of the capsule and oozed viscously to the ground. Yelena’s yecch was clearly audible through the speaker. Millinov breathed hard as he watched them crouch for a second attempt.

  ‘Careful.’ He licked dry lips, swallowed. Anatoly reached forward again, and this time managed to grasp the edge of the blob. It lifted easily and he maneuvered it toward Yelena’s jar.

  The blob quivered slightly, but held fast. Anatoly shook the forceps as the thing clung to its metal tips. He shook harder, swearing as he tried to prise it free against the side of the jar. Instead, the blob balled up for a second before dislodging, oozing over the rim and down onto Yelena’s hand and wrist.

  Smoke rose from the polymer sleeve of her suit — and then, in an instant, the blob had disappeared through a hole in the material. Yelena screamed and dropped the jar, which shattered into a thousand pieces. Anatoly tried to grab her, but she danced madly, swatting at her lower arm as if there were a swarm of wasps underneath the thick plastic.

  ‘It burns!’ she screamed, and fell to the ground, where her body performed a sort of convulsive dance for a few seconds. Anatoly grabbed her bicep and squeezed, perhaps to stop the thing from climbing any higher, or to try and hold her still.

  He turned to the camera, yelling for Millinov to get help, but all the scientist could do was recoil in horror, too shocked to react.

  The screaming and violent, spastic movements ceased abruptly and Yelena lay still. Anatoly wiped at the visor over her face, and Millinov zoomed the camera in for a close-up, but both efforts were useless. The perspex was completely clouded with perspiration, saliva and smoke. Millinov shuddered to think what the caustic blob had done to her flesh.

  He pressed the comm. button. ‘Is she… dead?’

  Anatoly looked up at the camera briefly, then back at Yelena. Her hand shot out and wrapped around his wrist.

  Anatoly’s yell made Millinov jump back a foot. He scrambled forward and watched as Yelena rose slowly to her feet, dragging Anatoly with her, even though the much bigger man was frantically trying to pull away. By the way he scrabbled at her fingers, Millinov guessed that he must have been in pain.

  Yelena straightened, unnaturally at first, as if unfamiliar with the joints and muscles of her body. She reached up and started to pull the head covering from her suit. Millinov quickly pressed the comm. button.

  ‘Don’t do that! Don’t… Anatoly, make her stop; we have no idea of the contamination…’

  It was too late. Yelena tore free her head covering and let it fall, scanning the room until her gaze finally rested on the camera. Millinov squinted at the screen. Her eyes were strange, milky, as if covered over by cataracts. She opened her mouth, wide, and spoke.

  ‘Let us out.’

  Millinov blinked: her lips hadn’t moved. She had opened her mouth and the words just… bubbled up and out. He pressed the comm. button again.

  ‘Ahh, I can’t do that just yet. Please be patient. . Dr. Mutko.’ He licked his lips. ‘How… how are you feeling?’

  Beside her, Anatoly grunted with pain, but she ignored him and continued to look around, slowly taking in every inch of the chamber. Her eerie calmness was a stark contrast to her panic just minutes before.

  Again, Anatoly cried out, and it was as if Yelena noticed him for the first time. She turned in that slow-motion fashion she had newly acquired, and reached toward him with her free hand. Taking hold of the toughened polymer fabric at his throat, she tore it away like tissue paper and wrapped her fingers around the back of his neck.

  Millinov watched, frozen in horror, as Yelena twisted Anatoly around as if he were a child. His arms flailed wildly, and he managed to grab at a tray of instruments, seizing a metal probe, pointed at one end, and roughly a foot long. He lashed out and buried it in her stomach.

  Yelena didn’t flinch. She continued to drag Anatoly across the floor. Millinov watched the probe fall from her stomach as though it had been pushed back out. There was no blood — only a small wisp of smoke, as though the wound was being cauterized.

  Forcing Anatoly to his knees over one of the slimy blobs, she pressed his head down, face first, toward it. The thing on the steel floor quivered.

  Anatoly shrieked with terror. He beat his fist uselessly against Yelena’s legs as the blob, contracting and expanding, inched closer. The man’s terrified eyes were as round as those of a startled horse, his teeth gritted in terror.

  ‘Stop! Ms. Mutko, stop — this is a direct order. You must stop now or…’ Millinov shook his head as he had no idea how to finish his threat. Anatoly grunted in either pain or exertion as Yelena finally pushed the bigger man down.

  The thing’s destination was now clear — Millinov reflexively placed a hand over his mouth. Anatoly must have also realized the threat, clamping his lips shut as the thing slid up over his chin.

  ‘No, please no. .’ Millinov whispered.

  The blob spread itself over Anatoly’s mouth, his skin beginning to smoke. Shaking with pain and shock, he parted his now ragged lips to scream. The thing immediately disappeared down his throat.

  Millinov retched into his mouth. He backed away from the screen, blubbering, his mind a mess of revulsion and confused thoughts.

  The capsule was never a probe, and the things inside were no contaminants picked up from our own prehistory, or from space. The cylinder’s arrival had been no mere accident. It had been some sort of incubator, waiting patiently for a hundred thousand years for the right conditions. For the right… hosts.

  While his mind raced to try to make sense of it all, Millinov noticed that Anatoly now stood beside Yelena. The two stared milky eyed at the camera. Together their mouths fell open.

  ‘Let us out.’

  He needed to call someone — the president, the army, anyone. After all, what better way to invade a territory than to find a way to infiltrate directly into its center?

  No, this was no accident; this was an invasion.

  CHAPTER 7

  The HAWCs were spread in a thin line at the edge of the town. Kolchek crouched beside a tree and held the night-vision goggles up to his eyes. He scanned his target, room by room. The lenses made the skin around his eye sockets dark green as the optics captured the upper portion of the infrared spectrum emitted as heat instead of light.

  Through brick and wood, he searched for thermal signatures. Finally, he shook his head. ‘Cold as a polar bear’s pecker. We’ve been stood up, boss.’

  Bronson grunted. ‘Does anything ever go to plan?’ He pointed to Alex, Bill Singer and Sam Stozer, and then motioned toward the house. ‘Check it out. Everyone else: eyes and ears — something’s up.’

  Alex nodded and turned to Stozer. ‘Forward advance with me. Singer on close cover.’

  The night was turning even colder, and a light sleet had started to fall. The streets were unnaturally quiet.

  Alex and Stozer ran for twenty paces together before peeling away to each take a side of the single-level dwelling. Singer came up behind them, giving cover, watching the dark areas of the near
by trees, the windows of the secondary dwellings over the fence, inside parked cars, and anywhere else that could be used as an ambush zone.

  Sprinting across the frozen sludge, and crouching beside the old wooden shingles, they waited for a few seconds and continued along the sides of the house, peering in windows, until they arrived together at the back door. Alex placed an ear to it for a few seconds, while Sam waited beside him.

  He checked around the doorframe; there was a small gap underneath. Reaching into one of his belt pouches, he removed a slim device with tubing wrapped around it. He unwound it, switched on the device, and the tiny screen lit up. Next, he slid the end of the tube under the door. The small screen showed the contents of the room — dark, no movement. Alex twisted the tube left and then right, looking back up at the doorframe and then toward its handle — no traps he could see.

  Wrapping the tube around the device again, he slipped it back into his pouch. He stood up and motioned for Singer and Stozer to position themselves on either side of the house — they wouldn’t all go in the same entrance. If there were some hard targets concealed inside, better to make it a little harder for them to take a HAWC down.

  Alex pulled his shortest K-bar and inserted its tanto chisel blade in between the lock and doorframe. He pushed hard: the wood crunched and the door swung inward. He pulled his sidearm, a Sig-Sauer 226, and clipped a sound suppressor over the end. He came in low and fast, keeping the gun up in front of him.

  The first thing Alex noticed was the smell: blood, burnt flesh and excrement — the smell of human torture. The three HAWCs, all in now, moved quickly through the rooms, noting the damage to the house and the bodies. Alex pressed a stud in his ear and whispered.

  ‘Three down, all non-Package. Signs of extreme interrogation; assume our primary Package either taken or gone elsewhere.’

  ‘Confirmed,’ Bronson responded. ‘Continue investigation for signs of secondary Package.’ Alex pulled a small Geiger counter from a pouch and snapped it to a band on his wrist. This allowed him to keep his gun up in a two-handed grip while reading the signals off the small flat box. They were only slightly higher than normal; this suggested the secondary Package might have been there, but was now gone.

  Bill Singer stopped over the smallest body. ‘Jesus Christ.’ The boy had probably been tortured in front of his parents. He was missing seven of his fingers — either he’d lost that many before they talked, or his small heart had given out, his usefulness exhausted. Not standard Russian military tactics… More like GRU.

  This is why we are right, and they are wrong, Alex thought darkly. Anger boiled inside him.

  He moved on past Singer, around the room, noting the blood-spray patterns and the disarray caused by the search. He put his finger to his ear again. ‘Party’s over; whoever was here has long gone.’

  Bronson’s reply was immediate. ‘Pull back.’

  Alex lowered his gun. Stozer appeared beside him and made a brief cutting motion across her throat — also nothing.

  Singer was still kneeling over the kid. Perhaps he reminded him of his own son. He crossed himself and his lips moved in a silent prayer. Alex shook his head. The man definitely needed to get out of the unit; he had too much to lose.

  Stozer holstered her weapon and shrugged. Alex was about to call the team to order when he saw Singer reach down and turn the boy… just a fraction, perhaps just to see his face, who knows… but it was enough.

  Alex barely had time to yell: ‘Stop —!’

  The hook pinned into the flesh of the boy’s cheek pulled tight on its wire thread. The high-energy explosion that followed carried enough percussive power to blow out every window, half of the walls, and lift the roof right off the old house. Alex found himself in the side yard, with Stozer sprawled beside him. She spat out blood, but got up with her gun leveled. Their suits were tough enough to absorb most of the impact, but they’d be covered in bruises for weeks.

  Alex worked his jaw, feeling rather than hearing a ringing in his ears. He rushed back into the smoking ruins. Singer’s legs stuck out from under a pile of rubble, and Alex pushed aside the broken planks of wood that covered his upper body.

  ‘Ah shit.’ The body was missing its head — the only part of Singer not protected by the armored suit.

  He mouthed the words: ‘Singer down — place was fucking booby trapped.’ With his ears ringing, he wouldn’t be able to hear Bronson’s reply either, but didn’t really want to. He could guess what it would be: you took them in; it was your job to bring them all out. He should have guessed they’d set a trap for them. He knew Singer had a kid, and that gave the man a blind spot. He’d walked them right into it.

  He switched the comm. off.

  Blinding anger welled up inside him. Stozer grabbed his arm and Alex pulled it away so forcefully she took a step back. Taking a deep breath, he held up his hands to show he was okay. He looked back down at the headless body.

  ‘Singer shouldn’t have come — he fucked up and now he’s lost everything. He should have quit sooner. D’you think his kid’s going to be proud?’

  Stozer frowned. ‘Would you quit? Would it be that easy? We’re not in some sort of pay-by-the-month social club, Alex. You know that.’ She stepped in closer to him.

  ‘I reckon if I had something important to quit for.’ Alex thought of his own father and gritted his teeth. One minute we’re all happy family and the next Mom’s so broken down she won’t even talk about it. His face was blank. ‘Yeah, I could quit.’

  Stozer gripped his arm. ‘Let’s make ’em pay. C’mon.’

  He nodded and knelt beside the body, sliding back a panel on Bill Singer’s chest and entering a string of numbers into the small keypad. Immediately the suit began to smoke. Its camouflage effect ceased and the flesh inside began to shrivel.

  Alex stood and turned without a word, kicking a hanging board out of his path — all reason for stealth having been ripped away. Stozer waited for him.

  ‘Let’s go.’

  * * *

  Bronson withdrew them a mile to the south, keeping them running at a solid pace, before raising a hand and pulling them into a tight circle. His HAWCs’ faces still showed commitment, impatience and plenty of anger, but no lack of clarity or frustration. Good, he thought.

  When they first regrouped, he had spoken a few words for Bill Singer. Was a good man, was about all he said. There’d be time for eulogies later. They all knew they needed to stay focused or they’d all end up anonymous bodies on some deserted Chechen road.

  He looked at Alex Hunter. His second in command was staring at the frozen soil; Bronson could tell he was still seething inside. Hunter was smart, unparalleled in combat, and had enough guts for ten HAWCs, but there was something inside him that was a little too turbulent. The man couldn’t let go. In the HAWCs you had to be cool and clinical, not some bloody avenging angel. He’d put it in his report and let Hammerson have a think about it when they got back.

  The packages were still in play, but now it seemed it might take a firefight to retrieve them. It also meant they were potentially a step behind the GRU. Tough bastards, but he knew they could go through them if need be. They’d taken a dent, but they were still fully functional. He looked at each of the HAWCs in turn as he spoke.

  ‘Listen up, people: the torture means they were seeking answers in a hurry. Means when the bad guys entered the property, they did not find what they were looking for. Package is still in play; mission is still go.’

  The team nodded.

  Bronson placed a small electronic tablet against a tree at head height and opened its map of the area, pulling the image back to a higher orbit.

  ‘This is where we are. Now, if I was Dr. Khamid, on the run and scared, where would I go?’ Bronson used a finger to move the map image to the left, and then drilled down on magnification. ‘I’d go home, of course.’

  Bronson used two fingers to open the image. A town even smaller than Urus-Martan was displayed. He tapped it and
turned.

  ‘Katyr-Yurt — about ten miles west-northwest, and still four hours until sunup. Let’s move, double time.’

  * * *

  Denichen Khamid lay flat under an oily canvas sheet in the back of the truck. The old Kamaz bounced over ruts and fissures in a road that was more a river of shallow mud.

  Yuri, the truck’s driver, made a guttural sound in the back of his throat loud enough for it to carry through the open window — it was not one Khamid wanted to hear. It meant he had either spilled his vodka or there was trouble. A whisper from the cabin resolved the question.

  ‘Roadblock — Russian.’

  Khamid’s stomach fluttered with fear and he tried to make himself as small as humanly possible.

  The old truck whined to a halt and a barking voice ordered Yuri from the cabin. Khamid lifted one edge of the canvas just a fraction. He saw two young Russian soldiers walk Yuri around the front of the truck and then came the impatient click of fingers followed by a single word — identifikacija — they wanted his papers.

  Yuri stepped back, felt in his pockets and pulled his wallet, making a show of dropping it. Khamid knew what he was doing — giving him a few extra moments. He slid out the back of the old flatbed and crabbed his way into the bushes beside the rutted road. Slipping over a small barrier of built-up branches and dirty snow, he rolled down the small embankment on the other side. He guessed he was still a few miles out from Katyr-Yurt, but as long as heavy snow didn’t start to fall, or a pack of wolves didn’t take an interest in him, or if he didn’t get hopelessly lost, he might just survive.

  He hadn’t thought through a long-term plan, but knew that as long as he had the disk, the Americans would come for him. He just needed to make sure he stayed alive long enough to make contact. They will come, they will come — his repeated thought was becoming more like a prayer.