Omega

Vassall didn’t answer but glanced at the main screen on the dashboard. The link was still out, but the screen was active again, showing a panorama of the base and the plain. There was an explosion nearby, and Owain was pelted with debris.

He leapt down and elbowed his way back to the brow of the ridge. The laptop was overturned, its screen smashed.

There was the sound of small-arms fire, among it the familiar chittering of PF-1s. They soon fell silent.

Vassall had angled the radar dish so that it was now pointing straight up. The wind had dropped but the smoke was thinning. Owain found his binoculars, managed to hold them steady. Tracked vehicles were coming out of the woods, clusters of men perched on them, firing indiscriminately. One, two bodies lay sprawled on the incline. He couldn’t locate the third.

A pulse of brilliant white light split the murky sky. It was like an intense burst of sheet lightning, swiftly gone but leaving him blinded for a few instants. The ground beneath his feet surged forward in such a massive lurch he was almost hurled over the incline. There was an enormous ripping explosion, as if the air itself had been torn in two. Seconds later a shockwave hit him.

EIGHT

He lay there in the snow, trying to blink back his sight as the thundering and rumbling went on. The very earth kept on heaving, while clouds of snow roiled in pulses of wind. It continued for several minutes before everything eventually became still.

eight="0em" width="13" align="justify">As his vision slowly cleared, Owain rolled over and crawled back to the brow of the incline.

He looked down on a seething torrent of cloud and smoke. A personnel carrier had stalled on the slope, and men lay flattened all around it. Behind them was nothing but elemental rage, a cold billowing cloud that he was certain was a nuclear explosion. The base and the plain beyond it were gone, consumed. Yet he could see no mushroom cloud.

There was a noise behind him. Vassall was clambering out of the Spectre.

The corporal shouted something, but the words were drowned in a spasm of gunfire. Owain saw him do a spastic pirouette that sent him tumbling into the snow.

He lay face up beside the Spectre, dead eyes staring at the sky. There was a bloody hole at the base of his neck. No pulse there.

Owain backed away, risking another glance down the ridge. A whirling storm of snow was sweeping up the slope, enveloping everything.

The instant it hit him he could feel it stinging his face—but with fire rather than ice. It clung to his suit and began searing holes through it.

He bounded for the wagon, unable to see clearly, finally finding the open door. As he was climbing in, something grabbed the leg of his suit.

Vassall had raised himself to his knees. He closed both hands around Owain’s ankle. His eyes were rolled up in their sockets, the blank white gaze somehow fixed on Owain’s face. He was dead, an animated corpse.

“Save me,” he burbled, the hole in his neck dilating, blood oozing out of his mouth with each word. “Take me with you.”

Owain was seized with revulsion and incredulity.

He kicked the corporal in the chest, sending him tumbling, and slammed the door shut.

Through the window Owain saw Vassall raise himself to his feet with jerky movements, heedless of the stinging snow that was assailing him. Owain scrambled into the driver’s seat. As he was putting the engine in gear Vassall heaved himself up and pressed his face to the window.

“Help me,” he mouthed, smearing redness across the glass.

Owain accelerated away at speed. For a while Vassall clung on, pleading with Owain from outside the window, his words lost in the engine’s roar. They hit a hollow and snow fountained up over the windscreen. Owain flicked the wipers on and kept driving. When he dared to look again the corporal was gone.

He drove madly through the blizzard, ploughing across terrain that made the Spectre buck and veer, climbing inclines and descending slopes with frantic abandon, wrenching the wagon through its gears. His face was still burning, and when he glanced in the miror he saw that it was covered with festering pinpoint burns. The body of the Spectre appeared undamaged by whatever was in the snow.

It had to be a new enemy weapon. There were rumours of experimental devices that used microscopic machines. Perhaps they had seeded the snowstorm with mini-incendiaries or engineered particles that would penetrate flesh and clothing.

The land levelled and he drove straight across it as fast as he was able. With the navigation systems out of action there was no way of telling whether he was driving in the right direction. The wagon bumped and pitched, throwing him around in his seat. There was a mechanical bang, and the right-hand side of the Spectre dropped away. Owain was catapulted forward, his head smashing against the dashboard.

It took all his willpower not to pass out. At length he raised his head and managed to lever himself up.