Colony by Benjamin Cross (ready player one ebook .TXT) 📗

More meat was shredded from the top of his thigh. His heart raced. Screaming, he swung the club backwards and it thumped into the latest creature, sending it crashing into a bone pile. He charged towards it, overcome with rage, and hacked the pointed rib into its gut. Then he brained it with his club.

Disoriented with blood loss, he threw his head back and roared with laughter before his legs gave way and he crashed down onto the dead creature.

In an instant, another one was on his chest. Another on his groin. Then his face.

They were all over him. But Volkov didn’t have the strength left to fight them off, or even to care. He felt a burrowing in his stomach.

Soon his tongue was gone. Then his eyelids.

The last thing he saw was one of the creatures scampering past with something in its mouth. It was small, black, rectangular, with a silver ring piercing one end.

He recognised it, but only dimly, as the darkness finally reached inside his skull.

3

None of the soldiers’ GPS tablets were still functioning and none had any useful mapping. Sergeant Marchenko had the same basic plans of Harmsworth that Callum had been issued for his survey, barely legible for blood stains. But there was nothing showing the rest of Franz Josef Land, beyond the outlines of the few immediately surrounding isles.

Part of Callum wished that he hadn’t insisted on checking the bodies himself. Perhaps if one of the others had been there to fumble around the cold, lifeless limbs, unable to feel sympathy for disgust, then it would have been a trouble shared. But this would be his nightmare.

They were waiting at the bottom of the moraine as he descended. Earlier, the three of them had managed to locate a drum of unexploded diesel and Callum had left the others, within shouting distance, to refill the hovercraft’s tank.

“Did you find?” Darya asked.

He shook his head and her hopeful expression faded. “We’ve got a choice. Either we stay here, take our chances with the creatures and hope that a real rescue turns up, or… we take the hovercraft and whatever supplies we can and move on.”

“Move on?” Ava said. “You mean search blindly for the base? That’s like looking for a needle in a whole field full of haystacks!”

“I agree with Ava,” Darya said. “There are nearly two hundred islands. We would search forever.”

“Not necessarily,” he replied. “Look at it this way. They will send a search party here eventually. The question is when and whether we’re prepared to wait around for it. I’m not. I reckon we decide which way we’re going and leave a note here so that when they do turn up they’ll be able to trace us. We can do the same at each place we visit, and in the meantime we may just avoid getting eaten.”

There was silence as the other two considered his words; either they took their chances with the creatures or they took their chances with the sea.

Then the silence shattered: “How about Option C?”

They spun around to see a bedraggled figure hobbling towards them. The man was shoeless and shaking. His feet, cut to ribbons on the rock, left a trail of bloody footprints behind him. He was wearing a wetsuit and carrying a loaded harpoon gun.

Ava could hardly speak. “Dan?”

Half-dead, Peterson smiled weakly. Then he collapsed where he stood.

Peterson was alive, though his breathing was shallow and his pulse weak. The three of them lifted him up and lay him in the back of the hovercraft. Using a salvaged first aid kit, Callum bandaged up his feet, while the other two placed their jackets over him and attempted to bring him round.

Eventually, his eyes reopened and he mumbled something incomprehensible.

“Dan? What happened to you?” Ava asked, stroking a hand across his cheek.

He beamed up at her. “Ava?”

“What have you done?”

Peterson described what had happened to him since the Albanov had blown, from his confrontation with Volkov and the bullet grazing his side, to his escape from the wreckage of the Sea Centaur. He looked uncomfortable, embarrassed, particularly as he described how he’d been duped by Volkov. His voice was low and broken throughout, and shortly after beginning to speak he started to sweat profusely.

“…when I made it back to shore, I couldn’t believe it. I was near as damn it hypothermic, even with the suit. Had to curl up between a couple of rocks and warm myself back up with the inhalator. Had no option but to use brine, so the damn thing’s good as busted now, all clogged up with salt. Still, it kept me going long enough to realise I’d have more chance of getting hitched to the pope than finding you guys in the mist. So I waited for it to clear. Saw the helicopter go down and figured that’s where I’d find you.” He paused then added, “Been walking ever since.”

“So it’s true then,” Ava said at last. “About the Albanov. It was you.”

Peterson’s eyes seemed to dim and he nodded.

“But… how could you do such a thing?”

“I’ve been carrying out attacks on corporate installations for years,” he replied, the softness of his voice at odds with his frankness. “This was my biggest project to date, but the way I figure it, the threat that companies like G&S pose to the planet is also the biggest to date. Every action will have an equal and opposite reaction. In this case, that reaction just so happened to be me.”

He surveyed their disbelieving faces. “The Arctic’s like a vital organ. We keep it healthy, we live long and prosper. We abuse it and, well… there are worse things than lizard birds in store for us. Anyhow, I know it’s not an excuse, but that piece of shit Volkov played me like a prize idiot. For what it’s worth, I’m sorry. I’d do anything to take it back, believe me I would.” He looked around. “Whatever happened