Alex Scarrow - The Eternal War

They had the officers’ mess to themselves.

‘A little situation appears to be developing up north that needs to be dealt with.’ McManus shrugged. ‘Nothing my lads can’t handle.’ It was obvious to Liam the officer wasn’t going to give him any more on that.

Liam stirred a teaspoon in his china cup absently, while Bob looked down at his tea, studying a pattern of leaves floating on the surface.

‘My ordering the disposal of those eugenics …’ said McManus, ‘that’s troubling you, isn’t it?’

‘To be honest … yes.’ Liam picked up a hard-tack biscuit off a plate between them and turned it over and over. Not really hungry. Not really sure why he’d picked it up. Something for his hands to do. ‘Yes, it is.’

‘They were older genics. Ones designed and grown a while back. Some of them were twenty … even thirty years old. They were unreliable, Liam. Dangerous.’ He sighed. ‘Back in the 1970s, they produced tens of thousands of them for all sorts of different roles.’ McManus shook his head. ‘Good grief, even as household workers … cooks, butlers, would you believe? And for those sorts of tasks they needed to be intelligent enough.’

He sipped his tea. ‘We’ve learned a lot about eugenology since then. How it’s far easier to design the shape and musculature of a creature than it is to design how it will behave, what it will think. These days we know better. The eugenics are crafted with far simpler minds.’ McManus shook his head. ‘It was madness, looking back now with hindsight, madness to have created eugenics intelligent enough to, for example, read and write. To hope we could grow creatures who would be our engineers, technicians, doctors … and assume they could be controlled like pets.’

‘Those creatures …?’ Liam looked up at him. ‘Are you saying those creatures were smart enough to read and write?’

McManus shrugged. ‘Most of them were the old-class manual labourers. More intelligent than the heavy-lifter genics we produce now … but not by much.’

He studied Liam’s troubled frown. ‘Look, Liam … I think you are making the mistake of thinking of these creatures as some form of natural life . They are not. They are organic products, bone and muscle machines … nothing more. And when a machine starts acting unreliably then it is time for it to be dismantled. Otherwise, people get hurt.’

Bob muttered. Something was going through his head. Liam glanced across the table at him. He looked troubled as well. Liam wondered whether his support unit felt some sort of kinship with the eugenics. After all, from what he could guess, they’d all sprung from the same science.

‘They were machines that had gone bad. And quite dangerous.’ He leaned forward across the small table. ‘I shall be honest with you, Liam. I wasn’t quite sure whether we would find your stepsister and friend in one piece. They are really very lucky to be alive.’

‘I s’pose.’

‘Lord knows how many more of those things are still out there. Most of the old-generation genics have been rounded up and processed, but I think there are still quite a few hundred scattered among the Confederate states: runaways living in derelict dwellings, or living wild in woods and mountains. It is a problem that needs to be addressed … and one day, I suppose, we shall have to track down the last of them. But it’s not something we can do right now.’

‘Why not?’

McManus looked like he was going to ignore Liam’s question.

‘Let’s just say the British army is being kept very busy at the moment.’ He changed the subject. ‘You and the others, what are your plans once we have dropped you off? A return to the safety of Ireland, may I suggest?’

Liam shrugged. ‘We were going to visit New York — ’

‘You know, it really is as if you have arrived from another world entirely.’ McManus studied him intently. ‘Did you really not know that New York has been a war zone for nearly seventy years?’

Liam nodded. ‘Uh? Yes, of course. Maybe me an’ Bob and the others’ll go explore the west instead.’

McManus nodded. ‘It would be a much safer excursion for you. I believe it is still an unspoiled wilderness if you seek the far western mountain states like New Wessex and New Albany. I have heard from White Bear that there are still tribes of Indians living in that wilderness.’

‘Eight hundred and twenty-four,’ said Bob.

The other two looked at him.

‘Uh?’

‘Eight hundred and twenty-four personnel,’ said Bob. ‘You have itemized that number of personnel, but initially you said there was a total of eight hundred and thirty-six personnel. That leaves twelve unaccounted for.’

McManus made a face. ‘Ah well, I am no mathematician …’

A klaxon sounded softly.

McManus looked up. ‘We shall be descending shortly for a pick-up. If you’ll excuse me?’

2001, New York

‘Well? Can we use it?’

Becks crouched beside the antennae array, a motorized rotating platform two foot in diameter topped with a dozen aerials like bristles from a hairbrush. Above them, a flared, cone-shaped dish of fine aluminium mesh.

Maddy shivered as a fresh breeze whipped across the rooftop. From where they were on top of one of the tallest buildings still standing she could make out most of the shattered remains of New York. A scarred landscape of jagged broken buildings like the stumps of rotting teeth. A landscape of crumbling concrete grey with a dash of green here and there where nature had decided to make an early start reclaiming the land for itself.

Down below, following the twisted trunk of cables over the lip of the roof, was the familiar outline of Times Square … although she’d discovered from Devereau it had been renamed Place D’Libertaire last time the French-run North had held the city this side of the East River. She felt dizzy looking down. She stepped back from the edge and turned to Becks quietly studying the antennae array. ‘So? What do you think?’

The support unit nodded thoughtfully. ‘The dish can be used to project tachyon particles. The antennae platform may also be useful.’

‘Hmmm.’ Maddy pushed her glasses up. ‘I guess I can figure out how to hook up the platform with our computer system. It’s just an electrical motor. Yeah, we should just take the whole thing.’

‘Affirmative.’

She left Becks inspecting the bottom of the platform and crossed the rooftop towards where Wainwright stood with a couple of his men.

‘We can make use of it,’ she said. ‘We just need to get it down in one piece.’

Wainwright nodded. ‘Good, I shall have my men help your … uh … your …’ His gaze wandered over her shoulder to the huddled-over form of Becks. His voice trailed to nothing.

Maddy had the distinct impression he was going to say ‘ your eugenic ’.

‘My men are telling me she killed every last man inside. The entire garrison.’

Maddy nodded. She’d arrived in time to see the last of the bodies being carried out of the bunker and Becks standing outside the entrance, her pale face splashed with ribbons and dots of drying blood and a friendly Did I do good? smile stretched across her lips.

It had actually made her shudder.

‘Not a single prisoner taken,’ said Wainwright quietly. ‘What on earth is she?’

‘Her mission priority was capturing the antennae intact. Not, I’m afraid, to take any prisoners.’

She decided it would be too difficult to explain to Wainwright that the lives she’d just taken with her bare hands were those that never should have been lived anyway. The bloody corpses lying outside the bunker were men who would be living very different lives once more … once history had been corrected.