Downtime - Marc Platt [98]
Londqvist was suddenly silent. Bambera angled a glance behind her and saw five squaddies sitting on him.
Ridiculously, she started to laugh.
The helicopter had come so close that Crichton could see the struggle in the cockpit.
It shot over the convoy with only feet to spare.
Crichton turned back to view the rout and tripped over Corporal Ishani lying face down in a shroud of web. He had given the order to pull back and forgotten to do it himself.
A Yeti loomed over him. He emptied his pistol into the brute point-blank. One blood-red eye spluttered dead. The creature reeled back momentarily. Crichton rolled out of its shadow and careered for cover.
As he ran, he decided to tell his wife everything. UNIT, Yeti, bug alerts, everything. Then he could plead insanity to whatever grounds for divorce she filed against him.
He reached the shelter of the convoy and ducked behind a jeep. The Yeti were still advancing. In the distance, the helicopter, apparently back under control, was turning over the west campus.
‘What’s happened to that rocket launcher?’ he bellowed.
There were shouts from the next jeep, where the ATR was mounted. Then a cry of pain.
One operative fell backwards from the jeep, knocked off his balance by a blow from the launcher barrel, which was swinging wilfully on its mounting.
‘It’s loaded! Get down!’ yelled the other squaddie as he wrestled with the weapon. The machine swung again and batted him away like a tennis ball.
For a moment, Crichton was looking into the muzzle – a judgemental finger singling out the blame and about to carry out execution. Then it swung away and trained itself on the distant helicopter.
Brigadier Crichton threw himself up onto the back of the jeep. He stabbed repeatedly at the ATR’s manual abort button.
The LCD announced that the computer sights had mapped out their target. FIRE SEQUENCE INITIATED .
Crichton slammed a fist down on the control board. No response. He saw the barrel adjust slightly. The launcher fired itself. The recoil slammed him off his feet.
A stem of smoke cut the sky and flowered in gold and vermilion on the belly of the helicopter fuselage.
The Hind tilted and lost height rapidly, vanishing behind the far side of the university.
Before they heard the boom, the Yeti were attacking the convoy.
The explosion thundered back and forth between the buildings. From the square, Lethbridge-Stewart watched a tower of oily smoke rise from behind the refectory block. The helicopter had come down near the canal. The alarm of the battle was fading.
Travers’s head turned to watch the prisoner. Travers, but not Travers. Every movement of the old man’s puppet, body was awkward, overblown. Invisible hands were angling and adjusting the head and limbs. The face contorted in a grimace of triumph.
‘Tell me, Brigadier,’ it confided jovially, ‘which part of my Great Plan do you think most strategically successful?’
‘None of it,’ said Lethbridge-Stewart.
‘What?’
‘For a so-called Intelligence, it’s pretty damn stupid.
You’re still trapped.’
Travers’s hand extended. Travers’s head studied it. ‘No!’
The whole frame shuddered. The stick stomped angrily against the ground.
‘That’s not a body,’ scoffed the Brigadier. ‘You’ve trapped yourself in a web of cable and silicon. All of it stolen. And you can’t venture beyond it.’
Travers’s shape drew itself up to its full height – scarcely enough to contain the energy focused through it. The brittle bones cracked in protest. The crown of the head bulged. A tear opened up on the left side of the temple. It ran down the cheek, stopping at the base of the ear. Green light seeped out.
The old body bag was coming apart at the seams.
‘I slammed the door on the darkness. I shall perpetuate myself in every machine and being in my world.’
‘Balderdash!’ The Brigadier surveyed the audience of Chillys. Rows of torpid young faces, all infuriatingly impassive to the fate of their world.
A movement caught his eye. A face was staring