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

and he could make out the edge of a kelp forest, the brown strands bowing with the current. Along the edge, and in between the belts of kelp, the seabed was strewn with multi-coloured rocks, rust reds, greys, blues and blacks, all glowing green with algae.

As the ripples widened, a second stone tripped through them and dropped into the water. He looked around to see Doctor Lebedev standing next to him.

“Your turn,” she said, another pebble waiting in the palm of her glove. Her pale cheeks were red with cold, and where the few fine strands of ebony hair had escaped from below her hat, the wind picked them up and whipped them underneath her chin.

He skimmed again, watching as the pebble caromed off a chunk of ice and disappeared without a jump.

“It’s the gloves,” he said with a grin.

Doctor Lebedev frowned playfully. Her follow-up attempt managed only two small skips.

“You are right, Doctor Ross. It must be the gloves.”

“Callum,” he replied.

She smiled. “Darya.”

“Can I ask you a question?”

“Of course.”

“What did you say to Mr Volkov earlier, in the meeting?”

Her eyes narrowed. “I told him that Harmsworth is dangerous enough without a lot of frightened people wandering around carrying guns.”

“And what did he say?”

She tutted at him. “Now that is two questions, Callum.”

6

Ptarmigan lay stretched out on his bed. Technically it was one o’ clock in the morning. But with the goddamn sun up at all hours of the night, it might as well have been one in the afternoon.

The day’s induction had left him feeling totally drained. Volkov could’ve talked forever, and being cooped up in the helicopter with all those corporate cocksuckers was almost unbearable. He took a deep breath.

On top of the chest of drawers beside him was an irritatingly pointless bedside lamp, next to which sat the copy of Ship of Fools. He stared along the book’s spine. Then he reached out and ran his hand absent-mindedly across the cover.

Since speaking to Finback last, he had studied the plans in such minute detail that they were practically burnt into his visual cortex, complete with annotations. He needed to be prepared for anything. He needed contingency.

The ability to memorise images and text like this was a skill which he had always had. His whole life, people had been crediting him with a photographic memory, but he knew that it wasn’t quite that simple. For Ptarmigan, memory was more a matter of discipline and determination. It was the sad fact that these were virtues most people lacked in abundance that made him a goddamn memory magician by comparison.

If there was something to be learnt, say the plans to an icebreaker, then he would read them… and then he would read them again… and then again… and again… tirelessly, as many times as it took to commit them to memory. That was why he had given a seamless rendition of Hamlet in the school play, and that was why he now knew the layout of the Albanov as if he’d built it himself from scratch.

He yawned and turned over onto his side in preparation for another night of broken sleep. Yessir, he had to hand it to himself: sleep-deprived or not, he was all over this project like a rash.

Tomorrow he would pick up the explosive and then… zero hour.

* * *

The red and white pills dropped into Finback’s palm. With a deft flick of his thumb he resealed the chrome-plated dispenser and slipped it back into his top drawer. The headaches were the result of a blow to the head that had left him fighting for his life as a young man. They weren’t migraines. There were no hallucinations, no sickness or disorientation to accompany the head pain, only intense flashes of blinding agony, as if somebody was slamming an ice pick repeatedly into the front of his skull. They had all the usual triggers, primarily stress and fatigue, and tonight Finback was feeling both.

He tipped the pills back onto his tongue and felt the bitter sting as they began to dissolve.

In front of the flat-screen monitor on the desk before him were three evenly spaced items. On the left was a large hexahedral bottle half-filled with Rodnik Gold, the most delectable and expensive vodka money could buy. Beside this, in the centre of the desk, was the print-out of an email, adorned at the bottom with the official footer of the Russian Government. To the right, resting with ironic delicacy on the polished wooden surface, was a combat knife.

Finback reached out and took hold of the bottle. He unscrewed the top and drank, throwing his head back to force the pills down. It pained him to be so uncouth as to not use one of his crystal tumblers, but the warning twinges were already beginning to pique and every second counted if he was going to avoid an episode of debilitating head pain.

He placed the bottle back down and reached for the email. There was no greeting, no sign-off and no text. There was just a simple table:

Team I

Team II

2020

3.64

0.32

2021

6.94

0.95

2022

8.59

1.31

2023

4.31

0.16

2024

2.49

0.03

Albanov

-

3.2

Total

25.97

5.97

Finback ran his eye down each column, carefully adding and re-adding the numbers. Then he took a pen from his top pocket, scribbled ‘20,000,000,000 rubles’ beneath the table and slowly underlined it. He did a quick mental calculation. That was nearly three hundred million US dollars, 200 million British pounds; two billion Chinese yuan. He pursed his lips. The figures were not unpleasant reading, but in truth he had hoped for an even larger differential.

He glanced down at his wristwatch just as the platinum minute-hand nudged onto the hour. It was time. He creaked back into his leather armchair, took out his phone and dialled.

“Good evening, gentlemen… Yes, I have seen them. I thought it might be more, but there will, of course, be further reductions as a result… You are happy to continue…? Of course. Everything is in place. Tomorrow he will pick up the explosive… because it needs to seem as real as possible. He is