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

here it was, signed, sealed and about to be decisively delivered.

Having worked quickly to attach the charges, two to the base of each tank, he made a final check then stood back and checked his watch. He counted exactly seventeen seconds and then set off back the way he’d come. Everything was now in place. In a few hours’ time that bastard Volkov and his cronies, the G&S Corporation, every other thieving, raping gas conglomerate in the world would get the wake-up call of a lifetime. If they wanted to sink their teeth into the Arctic so bad, then they’d better be ready. Because, with a little help from Ptarmigan, this was one ecosystem that would sure as hell bite back.

Chapter 6 Caves

1

Koikov flicked the end of his papirosa and watched it disappear into the mist. Just being back on the island was bad enough. A search and rescue in zero visibility was the last thing he needed.

The emergency locator signal had been picked up early that morning. It belonged to one of the science club, the Einstein lookalike Doctor Semyonov. God knew how long it had been transmitting for, but it had quickly been established that nobody had seen old Einstein or his guide now for over twenty-four hours.

He rubbed at his scar. “Marchenko! What’s the story?”

Marchenko peered at the GPS tracker. A red dot flashed in arrhythmic pulses across the screen. “Signal keeps cutting out and shifting.”

“What the hell does that mean? More interference?”

“No, Starshyna. My other sat signals are unaffected at present.”

“What then?”

“I’d say that unless Doctor Semyonov’s invented himself a teleporter, then he’s taken shelter in a cave.”

A cave. Koikov’s pulse quickened.

“It’s the worst thing he could’ve done,” Marchenko continued. “There’s no line of sight between him and the satellite.”

“Shit!” Koikov reaffirmed his low-visibility visor to reveal a landscape of contrasting shades. It was undoubtedly a useful piece of kit, giving him exceptional visibility through the murk. But the weight of it was distracting, and the constant fading in and out of the combined heat and ambient light signatures made him feel queasy.

“That’s our boy,” Marchenko said, his voice tinged with excitement.

Koikov looked over to see Marchenko’s gangly aura standing right next to him and pointing ahead. Through the visor, he looked like some kind of computer game character. Koikov hated computer games. He wasn’t that keen on Marchenko. He was a pussy. Not a hard bone in his body.

Koikov followed the line of his outstretched arm. A hundred metres up ahead there did appear to be the mouth of a large cave. His pulse picked up again. He scanned back to see the rest of the rescue team advancing up the incline, their colour signatures growing bolder against the barren rock.

“Old Einstein better be in serious trouble,” he said, striding on towards the cave. “Let’s get him and get the hell out of here.”

Standing at the mouth of the cave, Marchenko turned to Koikov. “That’s one hell of a stench. I reckon the doctor could be dead already.”

Koikov nodded. “Or it could be something else.”

“Like what?”

Koikov held a hand to his radio collar. “Private Yudina.”

“Starshyna?”

“On me.”

Koikov turned to Marchenko. “Sergeant, hand me that tracker.”

Marchenko went to protest, then unstrapped the tracker from around his neck and handed it over.

“Now fall back and take charge of the others,” Koikov ordered. “Advance them to the mouth of the cave then wait outside until I give the all clear.”

Marchenko fell back, and seconds later Private Yudina arrived at the mouth of the cave.

“You smell that?” Koikov asked.

The towering private took a lungful of air and nodded.

“You recognise it?”

Silence.

“Yudina?”

“Of course I do. How could I forget it?”

Koikov grunted in agreement. Though he knew that he was not directly to blame, he had still taken Dolgonosov’s death personally. How dare that creature think that it could fuck with his team! He should have reported the tragedy immediately. He knew full well. But instead he had finished his papirosa, slid Dolgonosov’s eyelids shut and set off in pursuit. It had been a serious error of judgement.

After repeated tours in the Northern Caucasus, Koikov knew a thing or two about taking things personally. He had witnessed some of the vilest injuries affronted men could inflict on innocent others. The attack on a nursery school in Nazran. The revenge massacre of an entire mujahedeen unit. The merciless show-decapitation of young Russian conscripts. The list went on. Yet he had dealt with it, just as he had dealt with the many other atrocities that he had witnessed in that sorry region.

But there was something about the attack on Junior Sergeant Sharova that Koikov knew would be altogether harder for him to deal with. It wasn’t the injuries. Sharova had been mauled almost as badly as Dolgonosov, for sure. But all Koikov could think about were the screech, the curled-back lips, the teeth. When he closed his eyes he saw only the hellish pair that had peered back at him out of the cave after he and Private Yudina had responded to Sharova’s screams and opened fire on the thing standing over their comrade’s body. And all the while, the air had been rife with its gut-wrenching stink. He swallowed hard. It was the same stench that was wafting over him now.

Koikov hung the tracker cord around his neck, and he and Yudina cocked their assault rifles. The crunch and slide of the metal working parts echoed around the cave. Glancing down at the tracker, Koikov could see a blinking red dot approximately thirty metres up ahead. As he watched, it disappeared suddenly, then reappeared several metres to the west.

“Why’s it doing that?” Yudina asked.

“The satellite signal’s weak in here,” Koikov replied. “The tracker can’t get a proper fix.”

“Can’t it pick up the signal direct at this range?”

Koikov raised his hand to his throat. “Marchenko?”

“Starshyna?”

“Is it possible to pick up the locator signal direct?”

“I already switched it over, Starshyna.”

Koikov studied the screen. Nothing had changed. The red dot flashed in roughly the location it had