Charles Stross - The Atrocity Archives

Well, yes. I cast a glance in the direction of the redoubt, racking my brains for a half-forgotten lecture on occult stealth technologies.

FIFTEEN MINUTES LATER-TEN PRECIOUS MINUTES of which expire in a feverish rush of poking clumsily at a severed ulna and radius with my multitool and a roll of duct tape-I'm standing in the middle of the dead ground in front of the redoubt. Things have clearly gone very pear-shaped indeed. I clutch the talisman like a drowning man and try to figure out what to do now.

(The talisman glows dimly, an eerie blue light chewing away at the fingertips. To get it lit, I used the basilisk gun on a tree stump and thrust it against the glowing coals. The deep incisions in the palm are the red of firelight reflected in freshly spilt blood. I grip the grisly artifact by its exposed wrist bones and hope like hell that it performs as advertised. See, if you stick a phase-conjugate mirror on the base of a Hand of Glory you can make it spit light; but that's a modern perversion of its original function…)

Overhead, the stars are going out one by one. The moon is a blood-soaked red disk; shadows are creeping across the landscape, settling across the hills I can glimpse through my night-vision goggles. And something like a fire is burning on the roofline above the last redoubt of the Ahnenerbe-SS: What's going on?

I try the radio again. "Howard to anyone, anyone still out there, please respond." The hissing, frying interference crashes in on my ears, obscuring any answer. I stumble forward on the icy ground just as something that might once have been human dashes around the side of the building, heading in the direction of the gate. It doesn't see me, but someone inside sees it: sparks blossom on the cold ground behind it, and I see brief muzzle flashes coming from a window-slit on the second floor. It was one of ours originally, but no human being can sprint around a building with their helmet off and backpack missing in a fimbulwinter cold enough to freeze liquid oxygen.

The possessed soldier raises something blocky to its shoulder and sprays cartridge cases all over the night. Maybe one or two of the bullets come close to the upstairs window, but if so they don't stop whoever's upstairs from catching it with their next burst: for a moment it capers across the ice, then it flops down and lies still. "Shit," I mutter, and find myself stumbling into a clumsy trot toward the gaping garage door with its welcoming airlock.

Nobody shoots at me; the talisman is doing its job, fogging the senses of anyone who can see me. I skid to a halt just outside, a nasty suspicion blossoming in my mind, and very carefully inspect the threshold. Yup, there it is: a black box taped to the wall, thin wire stretched taut across the threshold at knee level. Some wag has stencilled THIS SIDE TOWARD LIFE INSURANCE CLAIMANT on its case. I very carefully step over the tripwire then try the radio again. "Howard to anyone. What's going on? Who's shooting?"

A crackling whine flattens the answer, but at least this time there is one: "Howard! What's your condition? Report." I try to remember who it is, those clipped tones: Sergeant Howe.

"I'm in the garage with a Hand of Glory," I say. I swallow. "It got Chaitin while I wasn't watching him, but I got away-shot it while it was trying to assimilate me. A demon, that is. They take possession if they can touch you-it takes skin-to-skin or electrical contact. There was more than one out here but I'm not sure any are still up. I improvised a stealth talisman to get me back in here; you've got to put me through to Alan, immediately. "

"Wait right there." He sounds tense. "You in the garage?"

I try to nod, then answer: "Yeah, I'm in the garage-I spotted the spring surprise in time. Look, this is urgent; we've got to disable the demo gadget before we get out of here. If it blows-"

The outer airlock door edges open. "Get your ass in the airlock now, Howard. Close and lock the door. When it cycles, put anything you're carrying down and raise your arms. When the door opens, don't move until I say so. Don't even breathe until I say so. Got it?"

"Got it," I say, and open the airlock door. I freeze-then carefully put the Hand of Glory down outside the lock, power down the basilisk gun and isolate the charge circuit, drop the sack of severed hands, and make sure my palmtop is asleep before I look inside the chamber again. I swallow. There's a green spheroid taped to the inner door, a fine wire stretching from one end to the rubberised gasket that seals the lock. Below it, there's another gadget: a thaumometer, a sensor that monitors spatiotemporal disturbances indicative of occult activity. That, too, has a wire vanishing inside the gasket. I swallow again. "I'm stepping inside the lock now," I say. My legs don't want to move. "I'm closing the outer door."

I tell myself I know Alan, and he's not going to do anything stupid. I tell myself that Sergeant Howe is a professional. Locking myself in a room the size of a shower cubicle with a live hand grenade on the end of a string still gives me the cold shudders.

Air hisses through vents and I raise my arms, stiffly forcing the suit to comply. At the last moment I think to turn and make sure that I'm leaning against the side of the lock, not facing the inner door. Then the door clicks-audible, there must be air pressure inside-and swings open. Someone is kneeling outside, pointing a gun at me from behind a body that's sprawled on the floor right in front of the lock.

"Bob." It's Alan. "If that's you, I want you to tell me who else was in the classroom with us."

Phew. "It was taught by Sophie, and we were in it with Nick from CESG."

"That's good. And you're still wearing your helmet. That's good, too. Now I want you to turn around slowly, keeping your hands up-that's right. Now, I want you to slowly raise your visor. Hold it-keep your hands still." The guy with the gun keeps it levelled on my face. Mo was right: I never realised you could see the grooves-lands-of a rifle barrel at three metres; it looks huge, large enough to drive a freight train down.

Something jabs at my left leg and I nearly stumble, then: "He's clean," announces someone who was right next to me all the time-I never noticed-and I lower my arms. The guy who's been keeping me covered points his gun at the floor, and suddenly I'm breathing normally again.

"Where's Alan?" I ask. "What's been happening here?"

"I was hoping you could tell me," Alan says in my left ear. I look round and he grins tensely. The grin doesn't reach his eyes, which are the colour of liquid oxygen and just as warm. "Tell me exactly what happened to you when you went outside. Tell it like your life depends on it."

"Uh, okay." I shuffle away from the lock door and someone-Scary Spice?-swings it shut again.

I spill the beans, including the way Chaitin jumped me. I figure they already know that something's taking over brains and bodies wherever possible. My eyes keep being drawn back to the floor. It's Donaldson, the guy who was speculating about meteorology earlier. He doesn't look real, somehow, as if he ought to get up and walk away in a minute or two, peel off the rubber gore applied by the special effects people and have a laugh with us over a pint. "I figure the whole thing is a trap," I finish. "We were lured here deliberately. Only one of the possessors came through to our world, and it could only control one body at a time, but there may be more here. They're working for, or are part of, something that's not human, but that's had years to study us-to study the survivors from the Ahnenerbe-SS. It took over some useful idiots who tried to summon it from our side in order to use it for a terrorist incident; then it stalked us, kidnapped Mo as bait. It did that because it wants us to provide a power source that'll allow it to expand the gate and push its main body through into our universe. It's a lot bigger than the possessors we've seen so far-it's, like, it's achieved a limited beachhead but it needs to grab an entire harbour from the defenders-us-before it can land the main body of its forces."