Simon Green - From Hell with love

"I think it's time I dropped in on Doctor Delirium, for a little head to head," I said. "And maybe a slap or two, to put him in his place. Contact the local field agent, and tell him I'm going in. Do we know how far he is from Doctor Delirium's new base?"

"Conrad's already heading in the right direction, but given how far off the map the Doctor is now, even at best speed… forty-eight hours. Minimum. It's a big area, Eddie. It's not like there's a local bus. What are you going to do, grab a ride on one of the Blackhawkes, and then parachute in?"

"I think I can do better than that," I said. "Tell Conrad to make his best speed, and join up with me at the base."

I called the Merlin Glass into my hand, and shook it out into a door. Through the gap, I could immediately see the same aerial view of the jungle as on the display screen. The Merlin Glass was on the job. Callan looked at me sulkily.

"It's not fair. You always get the best toys! When I was in the field, I couldn't even get a short-range teleport bracelet without filling out a dozen forms in triplicate. Did you know the Armourer once used one to take care of a kidney stone? Just programmed the bracelet and then teleported across the Armoury, leaving the kidney stone behind?"

"Certainly sounds like the Armourer,"? I said.

"Wonder whether it would work with haemorrhoids…"

"You know very well you weren't allowed gadgets in the field because you kept losing them," I said, quickly changing the subject. "You were legendary for not knowing where you'd put things. The Armourer still keeps a list of all the things you've lost on his wall, and when I say lost, I also include broken and exploded. How can anyone misplace an enchanted motorbike?"

Callan shrugged. "It's a gift. Not everyone could do it."

I looked through the open door standing before me. The jungle canopy didn't have a red cross superimposed over it, but I was sure the Glass could take me to the exact spot. It had never let me down yet. So I gave Callan a cheery wave good-bye, stepped through the Merlin Glass, and found myself high up in the sky, falling more and more rapidly towards the jungle canopy below.

"Stupid bloody literal Glass! "

The Merlin Glass had already disappeared back into its subspace pocket, leaving me plummeting towards the jungle, grabbing handfuls of fresh air along the way. I turned myself over so that I could look straight down. I really was a hell of a long way up. The cold air slammed against me, buffeting me this way and that and tugging at my clothes, but not slowing me down in the least. My first thought was to summon the Glass back, and go somewhere else through it, but I was already travelling at such a speed that my arrival at another destination would prove just as tricky. Besides, I'd come here to get my hands on Doctor Delirium, and I wasn't giving up yet.

So I subvocalised my activating Words, and armoured up. The golden strange matter flowed swiftly from my torc, and engulfed me in a moment from head to toe. The air that had been slamming me about with increasing force was immediately cut off, and I could breathe more easily. I hadn't realised how cold I was, until the armour warmed me up again. I was still falling hard, but the jungle canopy didn't look that much closer. I had time to think about this.

I concentrated hard, and huge golden glider wings spread out from my armoured back. They cupped the air, and slowed me down some. I was still falling, but at least now I had some control. The armour couldn't fly, but by gliding in a series of tight circles, I was at least slowing my descent. I spiralled down and down, the huge green jungle rotating swiftly beneath me. I fell and fell, and I made a point of enjoying as much of it as I could. On the grounds I'd probably never have such an experience again. The jungle canopy suddenly leapt up towards me, becoming clearer and more detailed with every moment. I waited as long as I dared, and then pulled the glider wings back in, curled up into a foetal ball, and braced myself as best I could.

I hit the canopy hard, like being thrown naked through a brick wall. I punched through the outer layers in a moment, my armour protecting me from the worst of the impact. It still knocked the stuffing out of me. I smashed through layer after layer of the canopy, slamming through one thick branch after another, shearing them off their trunks. Each breaking branch threw me back and forth, knocking me out of my curled-up ball. My arms and legs flailed helplessly. All I could see was a green blur, with dark shapes rising swiftly up to hit me again and again.

I was still falling at a dangerous speed, trees and greenery whipping past me so fast I lost all track of which way was up. We Droods trust our armour to protect us from everything, but that's only because we haven't tested it against absolutely everything yet. It was entirely possible that the golden armour might survive the fall intact, but I'd be crushed to jelly inside it. The continuous impact of branch after branch was slowing my fall, and I grabbed at every passing branch as I fell, but they all broke off in my hands. I fought to turn myself over, so I was facing down, and the ground shot suddenly up and hit me in the face.

I don't think I've ever hit anything that hard in my life. Riding a collapsing hotel from the penthouse floor down to the lobby, from the inside, was nothing compared to this.? The ground hit me like a flyswatter, the impact jarred every bone in my body, and the world went away for a while. When I slowly came back to myself, I ached all over but… I was alive. I just lay there for a while, enjoying the idea of not being suddenly dead after all, my golden mask buried deep in the dirt of the jungle floor. I slowly got my breathing back under control, wriggled my toes and fingers to make sure everything was connected, and grinned stupidly. The armour had got me through again.

I pushed down hard with my golden arms, and slowly forced myself up and out of the hard compressed earth. Light returned as dirt fell away from my golden mask, and when I finally rose to my feet I found I was at the bottom of a deep crater. I'd hit the jungle floor like a meteor, and blown out enough earth to make a hole a good twenty feet in diameter. Steam was still rising from the smooth sides. I punched holes in the compacted dirt of the crater walls, and used them to climb up out of the hole.

The jungle pressed in close all around me, crowding right up to the rim of the crater. The trees were packed tightly together, stretching away in all directions, the space between them filled with hanging lianas from above, and thick bushy undergrowth. The only open space was the one I'd made, by falling through it. Broken branches and splintered stumps showed down the stripped sides of trees, and bits of broken vegetation were still floating slowly down. The thick overhead canopy blocked out most of the light, lending the jungle floor a gloomy, twilight ambience. Bright light streamed down through the hole I'd made, so that I seemed to be standing in a golden spotlight. Dust motes danced and swooped in the illuminated air.

I moved out of the spotlight. It made me feel like a target. I amped up the mask's sensory input, and the stench of the jungle hit me like a fist in the face; all rot and decay and thick unfamiliar smells. Out of the spotlight, I could see a long way into the twilight, but everything was packed? so closely together it was hard to make out any details. There were large animals out there, watching me silently from a cautious distance, but none of them seemed interested in bothering me. Inside my armour, I gave off no scent to mark me as prey.

The jungle was full of sound: growls and howls, cries and screams, coming from every direction at once as the jungle got on with life as usual. It was all eat or be eaten, with a hell of a lot of running in between. Higher up, there was a constant squalling of disturbed birds. I caught brief flashes of gorgeous colours, and the occasional rush of disturbed air, but the birds kept their distance. The loudest, closest sounds were the buzzings, clickings and rustlings of the millions of insects that swarmed all over the jungle floor. Any number of little darting things flicked through the air, while a great sea of motion swirled around my feet. There were ants and beetles and things I couldn't even put a name to, boiling all around me. I saw centipedes as long as my arm, rippling slowly as they moved, and tiptoeing spiders as big as my fist. Some tried to climb up onto my feet, but just slid back down again, unable to gain any purchase on the armour. The bigger ones kept well away; I think the armour upset them.