Alex Scarrow - The Eternal War

But her imagination flashed images of the short and brutal struggle that must have gone on inside. It made her shiver at the thought that she, Sal and Liam shared the archway with two creatures, Bob and Becks, who could tear the three of them to ragged shreds if the notion popped into their heads — if a line of computer code decided it was a ‘mission priority’.

‘To answer your question, Colonel … you ask what is she?’ She turned to look at Becks now on her back inspecting the space beneath the array platform, disconnecting the power cables.

‘She’s a killing machine … a combat unit from the future, I suppose… You could think of her as an advanced type of one of your eugenics.’

‘Good God!’ His eyes widened. ‘I would prefer not to think of her … it … as that,’ he uttered.

‘Becks is a she … not an it . You’d hurt her feelings if she heard you say that.’ She forced a chuckle. The laugh died in her throat.

‘And you, Miss Carter? What about you?’ His eyes narrowed. ‘Are you some artificial construct? Some sort of super-warrior in disguise? A eugenic?’

‘Once upon a time I was a computer-games programmer. Someone good at sitting down and tapping away at a keyboard. That’s me.’ She shrugged. ‘I’m no one special, I’m afraid.’

A breeze tugged at them, sent dust devils skipping across the rooftop.

‘Have you sent your message, Colonel?’

Wainwright nodded. He’d broadcast a rallying call to the regiments up the line before they dismantled the array. They could only hope his stirring speech would do its job and other Confederate troops further along would signal they intended to join the mutiny. But there’d been nothing so far.

‘We shall hear from them soon,’ he smiled. ‘I’m sure.’

‘Then we should get started dismantling this thing,’ said Maddy. She looked up at the blue sky, then south-west towards the horizon where a distant bank of cloud promised them an overcast day later on. ‘Who knows how long we’ve got until the British come for us.’

Wainwright followed her gaze. ‘Indeed.’

2001, New Wellington

Liam and the others stood on the gun deck just in front of the forward turret: a dome of plated metal ten feet high and two dozen in diameter, lined with knuckle-sized rivets. Two long artillery barrels protruded from gunnery slits, for the moment covered with a protective tarpaulin.

They watched as the carrier slowly descended towards New Wellington through a ghostly white sky of thinly combed clouds. To their left, the east coast of America; to the right, the surly grey Atlantic Ocean. Ahead of them he could see a grid-like blanket was spread beneath the prow of the carrier: roads, streets, avenues cutting the city into a chessboard of suburban, industrial and business districts.

‘Look,’ said Liam, pointing towards the coast.

The misty sky above New Wellington was haunted by the spectral silhouettes of a dozen elongated sky ships, several of them similar in profile to the carrier on which they were standing.

‘I see … eleven,’ said Lincoln. ‘No … twelve, if I’m not mistaken.’

Sal screwed her eyes up as she spotted faint dark slivers further out above the sea. ‘And more coming in.’ She looked at the other two. ‘Do you think every one of them is full of soldiers?’

‘I guess those are other British regiments.’ Liam tugged at the borrowed duffle-coat. Pulled the hood up against the fresh wind. ‘Something big is under way. That’s for sure.’

Closer to them, close enough to see the detailing of decks and gun turrets and the large segmented central gas-ballast tanks, a carrier almost identical to theirs was settling into a dockside berth. With the echoing of a horn like a distant whale’s song and a faint roar of compressed gas, it blasted the open ground beneath it — a space the size of at least two football pitches end to end — with a blizzard of snow and nitrogen gas. It seemed to settle on its own cloud, a white cushion that slowly billowed outwards and finally faded, revealing the acres of tarmac dusted with snow.

Liam could see four other similar landing strips, each one towered over by a pair of docking cranes hundreds of feet high. As they watched, the freshly landed ship was embraced fore and aft by the cranes, swinging round until they snugly locked on to the vessel, holding it like a babe in arms.

As the last of the nitrogen cloud cleared, the bottom of the ship’s hull began to open and loading ramps emerged. They watched the peppercorn dots of tiny figures disembarking and slowly forming into orderly ranks on the landing strip.

Liam and Sal looked at each other. A wordless exchange that Liam knew meant she was thinking the same thing. Yet another sight, another amazing sight, that was never meant to be.

He looked out again, leaning his elbows on the brass rail, at the vision, another moment in time that he knew he was never going to forget. Like the inland sea of Cretaceous Texas and that sweeping plain dotted with herds of dinosaurs; or the glistening wall of chain mail and armour of Richard the Lionheart’s advancing army; a horizon of fluttering pennants and waving pikes, the sturdy frames of trebuchets in the distance. Moments etched into his memory as permanently as letters carved into marble.

He realized that, if by chance he died tomorrow, in his short life he’d already seen more things — heard, tasted, smelled, experienced more of history — than any person, any historian could ever dream to hope for.

‘Now that’s quite something, eh, Sal?’

She nodded. Silently picking out her own details to remember.

Lincoln in turn stared wide-eyed and ashen-faced. ‘And this? This is but a portion of the might of the British army?’ he uttered.

Liam nodded. ‘Aye. More where this lot came from, I’d say.’

‘God …’ His courtroom bawl was robbed of its power and left little more than a fluttering whisper. ‘God’s teeth.’

Six hours after arriving over New Wellington, waiting their turn in a queue of leviathans floating in the sky — enormous, dark and brooding like anvil clouds — their carrier finally got its turn and landed amid its own blizzard of snow, and the first companies of the Black Watch disembarked.

Captain McManus was busy, along with every other officer, organizing their companies on the landing pad. Their men were going to need billeting in the camps around the docks for the duration of the stopover, supplies ordered and secured, shore-leave rota to be arranged for his men, equipment, arms and ammo, damages to be repaired and shortfalls to be requisitioned. A million and one things for him and every other junior officer to attend to. So his farewell was necessarily brief.

‘I should return home to Ireland, if I were you, Liam O’Connor. There’s much afoot … and it’ll all be happening north of here.’

Liam knew better than to question him further. McManus was already saying far too much. The young officer studied him and then Sal, who returned his gaze with a cold glare.

‘I suspect you think of me as a cold-blooded murderer, perhaps?’

She said nothing.

He took her silence as agreement. ‘I have seen what these creatures can do. Not just the runaways … but our very own trained eugenics. If it were my choice, then there’d be none of these aberrations in this world. Man has no business rewriting Nature’s work.’ He tugged the chin strap of his helmet tight. ‘But there it is — the genie is out of the lamp. We are where we are.’

He offered them a crisp salute and a warm smile. ‘I am just relieved you were both unharmed.’ He regarded them one after the other. ‘A rather strange “family” you make, if I may say so.’