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

place. If we can get it extended then I can try and adapt a tactical radio and transmit over an extended range.”

“The tactical radio signal is weak as fly piss.”

“But we only need to reach the base at Nagurskoye. It’s 250 kilometres as the crow flies and I’m pretty certain I can boost the signal. Then it’s just a matter of finding the right frequency.”

There was silence before: “If you think it’s doable then do it. If it doesn’t work then gather your team and rejoin the others at the bunker. Out.”

* * *

When Koikov returned he could see that the rest of the team had made a good start at removing the chemical drums from the bunker and stacking them as ordered.

“The majority are either full or half full, Starshyna,” Corporal Aliyev reported.

“Good, that’s how I remember it,” Koikov replied. “We need to gather up any others that are lying around as well.”

Aliyev’s brow furrowed. “Why? The bunkers are nearly clear. We’ve got shelter.”

“True,” Koikov replied. “But then what? I’m not about to just sit in there and wait for the mist to come back. Are you?”

Aliyev said nothing.

“We need to make what’s left of our ammunition count. I say we use the empty drums as a defensive barricade and set the full drums up at regular stations to form a series of perimeters. Concentric perimeters.” He mimed taking a shot with his rifle and then brought his hands apart to signal an exploding drum. “If those things want another fight, then this time it’s on our terms.”

Aliyev’s expression remained stolid. “You realise shifting all these things around is going to take time and manpower? Perhaps more than we’ve got.”

“Marchenko’s sending Turov and Dubrovsky back to help, and I’m here as well. Also—”

There was a sudden rumbling noise behind them, followed by the screech of metal on metal. Both men turned and watched as first the bucket, then the arm and then the body of an enormous mechanical excavator appeared over the head of the bunker. The roof of the cabin was easily three or four metres off the ground and the massive arm was laced with vein-like wires, pipes and pistons.

“I clocked her when I was out here before, cleaning the place up,” Koikov said. “Must’ve been left behind when the whole project went to shit.”

The corporal’s face flushed with wonder as the machine’s chest-height tracks clunked and rattled their way around the side of the concrete and came to a stop. The arm lowered down, pressing the teeth of the metal bucket into the permafrost. The cabin door swung open and Private Gergiev poked his beefy, oil-smeared face around the side and cracked his knuckles. “Anybody call for backup?”

Koikov turned to Aliyev. “This should speed things up, Corporal. We can balance two, maybe three drums in the bucket with each run and we can lash another two or three to the cabin. We can fit at least another three in the Czilim and another on the forklift.”

Gergiev left the machine idling and climbed down from the cabin to join them.

“Are you confident you can operate that thing?” Koikov asked him.

He grinned and cracked his knuckles again. “The controls are simple enough. The pedals work the tracks, the handles control the arm and bucket. It’s not rocket science.”

“So let’s get the fuck on with it,” Koikov said.

3

“The thing that really amazes me,” Ava was saying, “is their ability to change colour. Just like a chameleon. It’s a startling adaptation, I can’t think of any other parallels in nature. Contemporary nature, that is.”

Two hours had passed since they had left the remains of the campsite and she had talked about the creatures more or less continuously the whole time. Under the circumstances that was a good thing. Her obsessive scientific focus was probably all that was keeping her from seizing up with panic. In complete contrast, Lungkaju had kept himself to himself, walking ahead of the others, sipping at regular intervals from his hipflask. Without a word, he had navigated them around the southern edge of the Hjalmar Ridge and into the south-west of the island.

“There are no parallels for this in modern birds, or mammals,” Darya said. “Only in reptiles, amphibians and marine cephalopods. Chameleons are obvious example, but also some species of cuttlefish, squid and the mimic octopus, are changing their skin colour by manipulating their chromatophores, the cells that contain the pigment.”

“Why not birds and mammals?” Callum asked.

“This is because fur and feathers are made of dead cells, like human hair and fingernails,” she replied. “Their properties cannot be changed. To change colour, birds and mammals must produce whole new coat. It is why they moult.”

Ava looked confused. “So how do they do it then?”

Darya shook her head. “I am not sure of this, but I know that it is not the feathers that are changing. I think it is probably the skin. The feathers from the dead creature were without colour.”

Callum remembered the dull translucent fibres that Ava had handed him, like lengths of frayed fibre-optic cable.

“I think the feathers act only like magnifying glass,” Darya continued, “reflecting underlying skin colour.”

“Fascinating,” Ava said. “It’s the sort of thing that our current scientific techniques could never pick up on in fossils. Things have advanced so quickly over the last few years that it’s now possible to detect trace colour signatures in fossilised material. So we can say, for example, what colour triceratops was. Isn’t that crazy? But, I mean, even that technique is still in its nascency. The ability to detect a colour-shifting capacity simply doesn’t exist yet.”

“It makes you wonder,” Callum said.

“Wonder what?”

“What other basic assumptions we’ve got wrong.”

“You bet it does,” Ava replied. “If there’s going to be one beneficiary of all this, it’s going to be science. Science is going to learn a hell of a lot from Harmsworth. And I don’t just mean in terms of palaeontology.” She paused then added, “That is, if we ever make it out of here.”

Her words