Gary Gibson - Final Days

It looked like they were on their own. He sent a signal to the truck, activating its defence protocols. He heard it shift and rumble as it reconfigured itself accordingly.

Monk waited long, tense seconds, the chirping of cicadas intermingling with the sound of the APC burning. The air meanwhile smelled of mud and burning plastic.

It was starting to look like whoever or whatever had hit the APC wasn’t going to try and blow up the truck, too, which meant they were almost certainly after the containment unit in the rear.

He heard rustling in the bushes, then spotted Naz’s back about twenty metres ahead, moving cautiously through the undergrowth towards the thin trail of greasy black smoke that betrayed the APC’s whereabouts. He was, Monk noted with disgust, intent on being a goddamn hero.

Just as Monk opened his mouth to yell, he heard a low, throbbing buzz like a chainsaw. Something flashed overhead in the same moment that Naz glanced back in Monk’s direction, after presumably hearing the same sound.

Monk instantly dropped down into the long grass and saw an aerial drone flashing through the treetops, heading towards Naz’s location. He raised his Cobra, squinting down the sight, but, before he could fire, the ground beneath Naz erupted and he disappeared in an uprush of dirt and leaves.

Chunks of wood, soil and Naz himself pattered down all around Monk, and he suddenly felt his bowels threaten to loosen.

Keep it together , Monk told himself, once again trying his best to make himself as small a target as possible. But the drone was now moving further away from his location.

Monk let out a silent sigh of relief. If the drone was anything like the ones used by ASI, it would be equipped with IR sensors, and no way was he going to be able to hide from shit like that.

Monk crouched down low, considering his options, then heard a sound he at first took for another car or truck pulling up at the roadside. The sound grew deafeningly loud, and a dark triangular shape dropped down beneath the treetops, rapidly descending towards the road. A VTOL pond-hopper, by the looks of it.

He doubled back the way he’d come, retreating along the ditch and pulling himself up the embankment once more, panting and swearing all the way. The drone had by now passed over to the other side of the road, its rotors buzzing increasingly far away as it hunted for survivors. He’d been lucky, very lucky, not to end up the same way as Naz.

Monk kept himself flat in the long grass bordering the verge of the road, his Cobra in front of him as he looked around. The truck was sitting right where he’d left it, but it had closed its doors and adopted a rounder shape by curling itself up like an armadillo, and then surrounding itself with sheafs of armour plating. He watched as the VTOL – a sleek-bodied machine with the black hawklike appearance of a military unit – sent a furious blast of air rippling across the road and through the surrounding trees, as it dropped down alongside the truck.

Monk batted leaves and grit away from him and waited, as the VTOL’s engines died down to a low hum. Before long a door cranked open in the side of the craft and two men in jumpsuits climbed down. From what he could see out of his vantage point in the long grass, they wore standard ASI air-patrol patches on their shoulders. One headed for the truck, while the other moved towards the rear of the jet.

No way are they ASI , thought Monk, watching them for a moment. The uniforms didn’t look quite right, like they’d been imperfectly faked.

Monk heard the chainsaw buzz of the drone as it circled round towards him, then saw it pass back across the road in his direction. He figured he had maybe thirty seconds before it passed over him a second time, and he was pretty sure that this time it wouldn’t fail to pick out his heat signature.

He scrambled backwards down the embankment, and pushed himself in as far as he could get between the wide, blade-like roots of a banyan tree. With any luck those thick, damp roots would block out his heat signature.

His heart thudding, he watched the drone pass overhead but, instead of blowing him to pieces like it had Naz, it kept going. Monk let his head fall back against the gnarled trunk behind him and groaned with relief. He had two, maybe two and a half minutes tops, before it came back his way a third time.

He quickly crawled back up the embankment and peered through the long grass in time to see one of the two hijackers wheeling the containment unit back over towards the VTOL. The VTOL’s nose section had meanwhile opened up to reveal a ramp, looking like some winged monster with its jaws wide open and its tongue lolling across the road.

Monk glanced beyond the ruined APC, now struggling to push itself the right way up, like some mortally wounded animal, and saw the drone once more pass across the road and into the treetops on the far side. Before he could change his mind, he leaped up and ran, crouching low in order to present as small a target as possible, before dropping to one knee and preparing to open fire.

One of the hijackers spotted him and shouted a warning. Monk instantly let loose a rapid blast of fire from his Cobra, and saw the man collapse with a scream. The second hijacker ran for the cover of the containment unit, and began to return fire.

Monk flattened himself on the road and glanced towards his truck. He had maybe sixty seconds before the drone passed back over the road and spotted him. If he could take out emaining hijacker before then, he could hide under the truck bed, where the drone’s IR sensors wouldn’t be able to distinguish his heat signal from that of the engine.

Monk heard the surviving hijacker reload his weapon, and took it as his cue to again dart forward. A second later, he heard a buzz-saw whine coming from entirely the wrong direction.

He gazed up in stupefaction at a second drone hovering almost directly over the roof of his truck, the downdraft from its rotors scuffing up dirt and leaves from the tarmac as it moved closer. At the same time, he heard the buzz-saw rattle of the first drone returning through the trees.

There’s two of them , Monk realized, with a sudden lurch of terror. Maybe the second one had stayed invisible on the far side of the truck, or maybe he’d activated a motion detector of some kind . . .

The last thing he saw was the flash from an exhaust port as the drone launched a grenade at him.

FIVE

Copernicus City Medical Centre, Luna, 20 January 2235

Saul had been gazing out at the distant cliff walls of Copernicus Crater, when he heard someone enter the observation room from behind him. The Earth hung low above the horizon, the lights of the city blotting out all but the brightest of stars, so that the planet seemed to float in a lightless void.

He reached down and gripped the right-hand wheel of his wheelchair, pushing back on it so that he turned just in time to see one of two men he didn’t recognize close the door, shutting out the constant bustle of the hospital corridor beyond.

Saul cleared his throat. ‘Can I help you?’

The shorter of the two had unkempt, sandy hair, while his companion was thin as a rail, his expression morose. The shorter one stepped up next to Saul and peered out through the window, while his companion eased one buttock on to a side table next to the door, and folded his arms. Both wore dark, conservative suits, while their UPs merely identified them as employees of the ASI.

The shorter man turned back from the window and glanced down at Saul with a smile. ‘Alec Donohue,’ he said, introducing himself. ‘And my friend here is Joshua Sanders,’ he added, nodding towards his companion.

‘Let me guess,’ Saul grunted. ‘Internal Affairs?’