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

pulse slowed from a hammer to a tap, until he was no longer conscious of it. A deep calm washed over him. His mind focussed. He was no longer a practising Buddhist, but the devotion he had experienced in his youth had left him a valuable legacy. It had taught him the power of the mantra to recharge a man’s soul.

“…Nam Myoho Renge Kyo, Nam Myoho Renge Kyo.”

He reopened his eyes, took his reading glasses and slid them gently onto the bridge of his nose. Then he picked up the book again and thumbed through to page fifty-four. As he parted the leaves, the content raised up off the page towards him. Only it wasn’t text. It was the first of twenty-three detailed 3D architect’s plans of the Albanov icebreaker, superimposed upon the print.

He slid the glasses to the end of his nose and peered over them.

Text.

He reaffirmed them.

Hull of the Albanov.

He slid them down again and skipped a few pages.

Text.

He reaffirmed them.

Albanov deckhouse elevation.

Though he had already studied the concealed plans in some detail, he couldn’t help but smile. “Finback, you piece of work!”

He refocussed and searched out the ship’s engine room. The amount of high explosive he would be planting there, nothing could be left to chance.

6 Murmansk Airport, Northern Russia

The man who greeted Callum in arrivals was short and dark-haired, with the familiar high cheekbones and pale-bronze skin of the indigenous Siberian people. He wore traditional beige trousers and a padded knee-length parka, both made of black-stitched, inverted hide. His nose and cheeks were wind-lashed, and his fur-lined hood was pushed back off his head, leaving a ribbon of paler skin encircling the centre of his face.

He shook Callum’s hand. “Hello, Doctor Ross. My name is Lungkaju. How are you, please?”

In truth, Callum felt sick. Just about as sick as he ever had. It was partly the turn of events. The shock of Jonas’s relapse. The physical exhaustion of the last two days travelling from Loch Ness to Edinburgh, Edinburgh to Amsterdam, Amsterdam to St Petersburg, Russia, and most recently the twenty-six-hour train journey from St Petersburg to the northern port city of Murmansk. But mostly it was the look on his son’s face when he had cut short their holiday together. There had been no screaming and shouting, no tantrum. Just an unbearably silent four-hour car journey back to Edinburgh followed by a look of undisguised betrayal as the boy had slipped away from their perfunctory hug and into his mother’s arms.

“It feels like somebody’s replaced my brain with a bowling ball,” Callum replied at last.

Lungkaju looked blank.

“I’m tired, that’s all,” he said, failing to conceal a yawn. “Did my equipment arrive?”

“Yes, Doctor Ross, it is already on board. Now come on and I will get you to the outpost so that you can rest.”

As they approached the aircraft, Callum realised two things. The first was that it would not be an aeroplane transporting him to the ends of the earth, but what appeared to be a converted military helicopter. It was white with black engines, and a Russian logo was emblazoned on both sides in black and gold.

“We’re travelling in that?”

“Yes,” Lungkaju replied. “It is a Kamov, a military helicopter adapted to fly important people to the island and also back as quickly as possible. We are expected to land on the Anna Ioannovna research vessel in one and a half hours to refuel.”

The second thing Callum realised as they approached the Kamov was that he and Lungkaju would not be unaccompanied. Staring at them out of the rear passenger window were two pale eyes amidst a mass of mottled white and grey fur. Below the eyes, a damp nose was squashed up against the window, fogging up the glass with great gusts of breath.

“Do you like dogs, Doctor Ross?”

“I’m okay with dogs,” he replied. Not that it was an entirely relevant question. The beast panting away in anticipation as his master went to open the side door was clearly ninety per cent wolf.

“His name is Fenris,” Lungkaju said, throwing open the door. “He is very friendly.”

The dog immediately bounded onto the tarmac and advanced. Callum had seen large Malamute dogs before, but by any standards Fenris was enormous. His back was easily waist height, and as if to put his stature beyond doubt, he proceeded to plant his forepaws squarely on Callum’s shoulders and lick the side of his face.

Callum stumbled backwards with the weight of the animal, and Lungkaju tugged the dog down by his collar and led him back into the cabin. “He likes you,” he said, reclosing the door.

Callum wiped the saliva from his cheek. “Thank Christ.”

Once both men were seated, Lungkaju wasted no time firing up the Kamov’s engines. The roar of the rotor blades was quickly reduced to a background hum within the insulated cabin, and moments later the aircraft rose smoothly up and away from the airport.

Below, Callum could see the landscape thrown into sharp relief. The line of Kola Bay disappeared into the horizon, the fjord gouged deep into the rugged peninsular. Either side, the tundra was uneven, cut by rivers, lakes and gorges, and the thin cover of greenery was strewn with forbidding grey-brown outcrops of serrated rock.

As they accelerated north, the city of Murmansk itself puttered into being and then sprawled along the eastern side of the bay. Its concrete aura barely dwindled before merging into the next great scar. “The naval settlement at Severomorsk,” Lungkaju said.

From here the land either side of the estuary shattered. A chaos of islands, rivers and fjords tussled for space, and the waters of the bay teemed with commercial vessels. Then before long the whole fragmented scene thinned away, until only a solitary tanker remained lonely against the vast blue-grey expanse of the Barents Sea.

With the coast behind them, Lungkaju seemed to relax. He shuffled back in his seat and reached inside his coat pocket, withdrawing a small leather flask. He unscrewed the top, took a draught and then offered