Downtime - Marc Platt [91]
The remaining Chillys sat in passive contemplation of the patterns of web on their terminal screens.
The convoy drew up on the outer perimeter road of the university. Brigadier Crichton, not a happy man, surveyed his meagre squad of twenty as they piled out of the UNIT jeeps.
He’d taken every available soldier he could find, leaving UNIT HQ on skeleton staff. They were highly skilled soldiers, trained to deploy cutting edge weaponry – gadgets that the regular forces would pay their eye teeth to be able to afford.
Except that computer technology had outsmarted them. It was suddenly too dangerous. UNIT was back to basics, issued with entirely manually operated guns. When they’d broken them out of store, the men had joked about The Antiques Roadshow and about not knowing which way round to hold the weapons.
Crichton was taking no chances. He was out on a limb. One time or another they’d all trained with these guns, but it was just training, not put into practice. He positioned his men to cover the front of the main block and tried to call his adjutant on an ancient walkie-talkie.
There was no response from her.
‘Captain Bambera? Do you read me? Please respond.’
The radio buzzed with a random electronic jamming pattern. It pulsed in time with the beams of light shooting up from the New World buildings.
The sky overhead was cut off. The web canopy was extending in all directions out towards the horizon, throwing out fingers like frost flowers through the atmosphere. Web strands were drizzling down, catching in the trees like spanish moss. Increasingly frustrated, Crichton decided to take the bull by the horns.
‘Sergeant Beagles. Six-man escort now. I’m going up to knock on the front door.’
His entourage set off across the lawns, heading towards the glass-fronted reception area. As he reached the concourse, a door in one of the side buildings opened. A figure in frill uniform lurched out.
‘Not that way, Brigadier,’ rasped Captain Cavendish. His voice was a tortured parody of itself. His face had become a mask behind which his cold-blooded eyes darted like a reptile’s.
Not that way, Brigadier... Brigadier... Brigadier... echoed the campus PA system.
Crichton ignored the mockery from all around him. He already had the young man in his sights. ‘You are under arrest, Cavendish. Where’s that file you stole?’
The PA system roared with cold laughter, throwing its voice from one speaker to another across the campus. Finally the laugh settled in Cavendish’s throat. He moved like a puppet, his uncoordinated limbs jerking to the reflexes of an outside force.
The voice said, ‘Your Captain is no longer answerable to you.’
‘Who are you?’ called Brigadier Crichton.
‘I am many!’
Many! Many! Many!
Cavendish’s arm rose and indicated the door leading into the building. ‘Come inside and see for yourself.’
Crichton glanced briefly round at his men. ‘No thanks. I prefer to talk out here.’
‘Sir,’ whispered the corporal next to Crichton. He nodded with his eyes to the parkland beyond the administration block.
Several objects were moving through the trees – large shapes striding out of the shrubbery about to cut off Crichton’s group from the rest of the squad.
‘Yeti!’ shouted Crichton.
Three more of the bearlike creatures ducked out through the doorway behind Cavendish.
Crichton’s practised eye took in their situation. Cavendish, or whatever was controlling Cavendish, had hoped to get them surrounded where they stood. Lawns by their nature afforded little cover. ‘Pull back and re-form!’ he yelled and brought up the rear as the group withdrew to the ‘safe’ position of a nearby herbaceous border.
Captain Cavendish stood back as the Yeti started to advance.
Brigadier Crichton crouched in the flowerbed, his boots sinking into the muddy topsoil. The men round him were tense, fingering the triggers of their automatic rifles.
‘Call this a rapid-reaction force?’ he muttered. ‘Where the hell’s Bambera with that back-up?’
Sarah had left her Spitfire further along the road, out of sight of the convoy.