Charles Stross - The Atrocity Archives

I get down and feel icy cold through the thick padding on my knees and elbows. There's some radio chatter: terse announcements as each team makes its way through a series of checkpoints. "Chaitin, keep the blockhouse covered. Hutter, any signs of life?"

"Hutter: nothing, boss. Blockhouse is warm, but nothing's moving outside it. Uh, correction. I have a temperature fix on the courtyard; it's a couple of degrees warmer than outside. Probably heat from the blockhouse." The blockhouse is glowing brightly on infrared, a surer sign of life than anything else we've seen.

I edge through the tunnel under the walls-rammed earth overhead, frozen like cement-and peer round the corner at the blockhouse. The name doesn't do it justice; it's the central building in the complex and it's built like a small castle. Windows, high up, big dome erupting from the roof, small doors shut tight against the chill. Some kind of small vehicle, like a weird cross between a tank and a motorbike, is parked against the wall, dusty with a sprinkling that isn't snow.

"Cool, I always wanted a Kettenkrad," someone remarks on the common channel.

"Morris, shut the fuck up; the cylinder heads are probably vacuum welded anyway. Chaitin, check out the doors. Scary Spice, cover with the M40."

Someone who doesn't look at all like one of the Spice Girls moves up beside me and levels something that looks like a drainpipe fucking a submachine gun at the blockhouse. Someone else, anonymous in winter camouflaged pressure gear, jogs forward and then dashes at the door. Bazooka man whacks me on the shoulder to get my attention: "Get back!" he hisses.

"Okay, I'm back," I say. Funnily enough I don't feel afraid at all, which surprises me. "Say, are you sure this isn't Castle Wolfenstein?"

"Fuckin' dinna say that else ye can live with the fuckin' consequences," someone rumbles in my ears. Soldier #1 raises something that looks like a plumber's caulking gun and squirts white paste around the frame of the blockhouse door. Still no sign of a welcoming committee. I glance up at the hostile red stars above the battlements and wonder why I can't see very many of them. A thought strikes me just as the guy with the plumber's mate sticks a timer into the goop and bounds back our way then crouches: "Cover!" The ground bounces and smoke and gas puffs out from the edges of the door-the gunk is a high-brisance explosive and it cuts through the reinforced steel door like a blowtorch through butter. I see the door getting bigger and beginning to squash vertically-then it slams past us and the escaping gush of air bowls me right over and nearly rolls me along the frigid ground.

"Jesus," someone says, and I turn round to see where the door landed behind me. Something is wrong my nerves are screaming-where the hell are the Ahnenerbe? There should be people here, that's what's wrong.

Scary Spice has his grenade launcher levelled on the chamber behind the door, but the air flow has stopped and when Chaitin tosses in a flare it lights up a bare, empty room the size of a garage, with sealed doors to either side. "Spooky," I remark. "Looks empty. Anyone home?"

The SAS aren't waiting around to find out; the whole of Bravo team piles into the empty vestibule in a hurry and Chaitin moves forward. More chatter: "Airlocks, this is a fucking death trap get us in get us in …"

"Castle fucking Wolfenstein, eh?" Alan remarks in my ear, and according to my chest panel he's on a private channel. I join him.

"Why isn't anybody here?" I ask.

"Who the fuck knows? Let's just get inside, fast. You got any ideas?"

"Yeah. If you depressurize this building and Mo's inside you'll have lost us our best clue yet."

"If I don't depressurize that building and some fucking Nazi revenant ices my people I'll have lost more than just our best clue." Someone taps me on the shoulder and I jump, then turn far enough to recognise Alan. "Remember that," he says.

"We're here for information first-" I say, but he's cut over to another channel already so I don't know if he hears me. In any case, he taps me on the shoulder again and waves me toward the vestibule. Where Bravo team has sprung a door with a big locking wheel, hopped through, and the wheel is now spinning behind them. Airlock door, at a guess.

"Bravo, Mike here, we have atmosphere-half a kilopascal at only twenty below freezing. Pressure's coming up: lock safety is tripped. Everything here looks to be in working order, but dusty as hell. We're ready to go through on your word."

I follow Alan and Alpha squad into the vestibule. Scary Spice is busy laying strips of some kind of explosive gunk all around the airlock door, while one of the other soldiers lines up on it with a heavily insulated light machine gun. I flick to the main channel and listen to the crackly chatter; something seems to be wrong with my radio because I'm picking up a lot of noise. Noise-

"Howard here, anybody else picking up a lot of radio hash?"

"Hutter here, who was that? Repeat please, I'm reading you strength three and dropping."

"Hutter, Bob, cut the chatter and use your squelch. We've got a job to do here." Alan sounds distinctly preoccupied; I decide interrupting is a bad idea and focus instead on my suit radio in case there's a problem with it. A minute of fiddling tells me that there isn't. It's a really cute UHF set, able to hop around about a zillion sidebands at high speed-analogue, not digital, but the pinnacle of that particular technology. If it's picking up hash then the hash is spread far and wide.

I walk back to the vestibule entrance and look up at the sky. The stars are really prominent; the smoky red whirlpool of the galaxy stares down at me like a malignant red eye, startlingly visible against the night. I hunt around for the moon but it's out of direct sight, casting knife-edged black shadows across the pale blue snowscape. I blink, wishing I could rub my eyes. Blue? I must be seeing things. Or maybe the optical filters on my helmet are buggering my colour sensitivity-I've had it happen with computer screens before now.

I turn back to face the interior and someone is waving me forward; the airlock door gapes open. "Howard, Hutter, Scary, your cycle." I move forward carefully. The concrete floor is chipped and scarred, stained with old grease marks. I look round: something large is inching toward the gates-Pike, and the cart with the H-bomb. "I'll follow you through with the charge," Alan adds. I step through into the airlock room, boggling at the array of pipework on view-it's like something out of a war movie, the interior of a beached U-boat, all plumbing and dials and big spinner wheels. Hutter pushes the door closed behind us and cranks a handle. The airlock is narrow, and dark except for our helmet lamps; I shudder, and try not to think about what would happen if the door jams. On my other side Scary Spice yanks a valve-lever in the opposite door, and there's a thin hissing as fog spills into the room from vents along the floor. A needle in my suit's chest instrument panel quivers and begins to move-air pressure. After a few more seconds I feel my suit going limp and clammy around me, and hear a distinct clank as the hissing stops.

"Going through," says Scary Spice, and he spins the locking wheel on the inner door and pushes it open.

I'm not sure what I am expecting to see; Castle Wolfenstein is a definite maybe, and I was subjected to the usual run of second-rate war movies during my misspent childhood, but the last thing on my list would have been a kennel full of freeze-dried Rottweilers. Someone has powered up an overhead light bulb which is swinging crazily at the end of its cord, casting wild shadows across the emaciated-looking corpses of a dozen huge dogs. Next to the airlock is a table, and behind it a wall of lockers; ahead of us, a wooden door leading onto a corridor. The light doesn't reach far into those shadows. Hutter prods me in the back and as I step forward something crunches under my boot heel, leaving a nasty brownish stain on the floor. "Yuck." I look round.