The Eternal War

CHAPTER 86

2001, New York

Maddy could hear the fighting had resumed; this time the crack and rattle of gunfire was much closer.

She was worried that something, or someone, would knock or damage the antennae array above. It would take just one stray bullet, that’s all, just one … then this effort, the sacrifice, the bodies she’d seen lying side by side like sardines in a tin, all of that would have been for nothing.

Becks was outside fighting alongside the men. She could imagine the support unit was quite at home, content, covered in blood and mud, doing what she did best.

She heard someone bellowing orders, Devereau she guessed, followed by the deep throbbing burr of one of their heavy machine guns. She turned to look out of the entrance. She could see boots and drooping belts of ammo beneath the shutter: the machine-gun teams emerging from the fort and redeploying along the horseshoe.

It’s getting real close.

Both colonels had insisted the three machine-gun teams would be the last line of defence, the fort would be their Alamo.

Clearly these plans were now fluid.

Oh crud … Get a move on, Liam … for God’s -

› Maddy?

‘What?’

› The density probe has just picked up some movement.

‘Repetitive … not random?’

› Correct.

‘Grab an image!’

› Affirmative.

She saw the light-meter on the displacement machine flicker as energy was discharged, despatched along the heavy-duty insulated cables up through the jagged hole in the roof to be targeted by the array outside: space-time being discreetly teased open, an unfathomable spatial dimension punctured with a pin hole.

She watched the monitor on the right as a blocky low-resolution image appeared. The same image as last time: a muddy field, some sort of low hut, a darkening sky. But this time she could just about make out the blurred silhouette of some stupid fool caught mid-air doing star jumps.

Liam.

‘That’s them!’

› Affirmative. Activate the window?

‘Yes! Do it!’

The light-meter, bars of LEDs like a graphic equalizer, fluttered excitedly with the sudden expenditure of accrued energy. Two remote windows being opened simultaneously: one a hundred miles south of here, another in New Orleans, 1831. That was going to drain their charge completely. The rest then … was going to be up to them.

She listened to the displacement machine’s circuitry hum, saw the green charge display silently wink to red, one light after the other.

And the rest was going to be just waiting. And hoping.

Yet again.

Another of the leviathans slowly collapsed to its knees, the thick armour plating over its chest misshapen and twisted under the battering of a steady sputtering stream of high-calibre rounds. Blood was pouring down its front from numerous ragged wounds. It flailed its huge blade-tipped fists pitifully, angrily.

‘Got us another one!’ roared Sergeant Freeman, punching the air.

‘Come along! Here! This is good. Right here!’ Wainwright waved the other machine-gun teams into position against the trench wall. ‘Fire on those eugenics! Upper chest area … there are gaps in the armour! Do you see?’

Devereau was studying the slope below, illuminated now by crimson flares being shot into the night sky from their landing raft — bathing the whole mud-churned and cratered battlefield with a flickering blood-red light. Beyond the six remaining eugenics clanking slowly uphill bearing the weight of their armour — surely several tons of it each, he guessed — British soldiers were amassing in the borderline. He could see officers moving among knots of men, poised to step over the top and support the eugenics with a rush. And there, sitting astride sandbags, a British officer calmly observing the events uphill from him through a pair of field glasses.