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

She nodded. “I know. I just… I just need time… to get my head straight.”

Lungkaju smiled and took her hand. “Then I will stay with you and wait.” He turned to Callum. “My friend, you and Doctor Lebedev should go ahead.”

“And leave you two here?” Darya protested. “No, we cannot.”

“You are not leaving us,” Lungkaju answered, maintaining his air of calm command. “You must get to the compound as soon as possible and let them know that we are still alive. They probably think…” He trailed off, then added, “We will follow you down, yes, Doctor Lee?”

She nodded.

“But—”

“He’s right,” Ava said, cutting her off. “You two go on ahead. I’m just being silly. Making a big deal out of nothing.” She punched herself in the thigh. “I’ve been up the CN Tower before, for God’s sake. Twice! I just need a few moments, that’s all, and then we’ll follow you down.”

Darya was still protesting as Callum took her hand. Exchanging a nod with Lungkaju, he set off down the slope.

* * *

In the middle of the floor in Chamber 3, Ivanov and Koshkin knelt either side of Private Tsaritsyn. They had made him a makeshift mattress out of jackets and other spare bits of clothing and were attempting to tend his wounds with the meagre contents of the field first aid kit.

Tsaritsyn’s narrow, youthful face looked even paler than before. His eyes were closed. Blood was soaking through his chest dressing and his trembling was continuous.

Ivanov looked up. “He won’t stop shaking, Starshyna.”

For a moment Koikov was silent. He knew a dying man when he saw one. “How much morphine do we have?”

Koshkin eyed him suspiciously, then he rooted through the first aid kit and produced a vial of liquid. Reading off the label he said, “Six hundred milligrams, Starshyna.”

Koikov took a deep breath. “One hour.”

“One hour, what?”

“One hour, and if we’ve had nothing from Nagurskoye, then dose him up.”

“Starshyna, are you suggesting—”

“This man is beyond our help, Koshkin. He’s not beyond our compassion. One hour. And move him into Chamber 2. From now on that’s your theatre.”

He went to exit the bunker, but as he approached the stairs he drew to a sudden halt. His gaze was fixed above the doorway. “Son of a…”

“What is it, Starshyna?” Ivanov asked.

Attached to the ceiling, directly above the doorway, was a detonator. It was strapped to a sizeable block of C4.

“My charges!” Koikov’s mind raced back to when Dolgonosov’s screams had signalled the start of the living nightmare. The charges he’d been setting in order to collapse the bunker system had been left in place. The wiring was unfinished, but it was nothing half an hour’s attention wouldn’t solve.

Ignoring the continued questioning of Ivanov and Koshkin, he paced back through to Chamber 1. Above the external doorway, the second of the two charges also remained. A smile had just enough time to break across his lips before his radio crackled.

“Starshyna, this is Corporal Voronkov. Come in.”

“What is it, Corporal?”

Voronkov seemed to hesitate. “Mist, Starshyna. Coming in from the east.”

Koikov’s heart sank. He strode over to the rifle slit and stared out. Another thick bank of grey-white was already obscuring the high ground; Hjalmar Ridge was completely shrouded. He watched, mesmerised, as the heart of the island disappeared, the front of the vapour cloud splitting into five thick fingers, feeling their way down into the basin. “What is it with this fucking place!” he shouted. “Okay, Voronkov, I need you to be my eyes up there, you understand? Keep me up on what’s happening around this bunker? I know it’s not ideal, but there’s no other option.”

There was a long pause, then, “Understood. Out.”

Koikov peered over at the small cache of weapons that had made it this far. Stacked like a shrine against the wall of Chamber 1 were five or six ammo crates, two RPGs and a flame unit. He took small comfort in them, but comfort nonetheless.

He turned his attention back to the mist. By now it was cascading down over the Hjalmar foothills, devouring the island from the top down. He could smell its sour tang already. He wanted to spit, but his mouth was already as dry as sun-bleached bone.

“Shit!” He brought a hand to his radio collar and made an open transmission: “All personnel, this is Starshyna Koikov. Brace yourselves.”

Chapter 14 Grudge

1

The narwhals were agitated. The larger males had taken up wide positions, flexing their tusks and chaperoning their families’ flanks. In the centre, the dark blue calves stuck close to their mothers. They swam huddled, barging forward, careless with angst.

Out of curiosity, Peterson switched on the sub’s hydrophone. The cabin came alive with clicks, frequency-modulated whistles and pulse-like bursts of sonar as the thirty or so animals broke around the Centaur and left it rocking in their wake.

Maybe it was the presence of the sub? Peterson doubted it. They were skittish by nature, but there was something else. He switched off the hydrophone. Had the circumstances been different, he would have taken a much keener interest, perhaps even followed the pod as they made for deeper water. Instead, with the cabin plunged back into silence, he refocussed his attention on the grey-blue waters off Valerian Cove.

Several hours had passed since Peterson had relocated the beach where he’d left Ava, McJones and Lebedev stranded. They had long gone. He’d suspected as much. But that had been little consolation as he’d searched his way to the top of the scree-slope surrounding the beach and scanned in vain over Harmsworth’s interior. For someone who had barely set foot on the island before, it was a new kind of desolation that had confronted him. Vast and unforgiving. Ridges and valleys. Rock and more rock. It looked about as welcoming as a mound of fire ants.

The idea that the three of them had made for the old military base was by no means a certainty. Peterson knew its location well enough – he’d earmarked it as a possible contingency