The Source by Brian Lumley

The echoes of his cry, his cursing and his vow died away, and for a long time Shaithis stood there alone with his dark Wamphyri thoughts . . .

Ten days later:

At Perchorsk, Chingiz Khuz paraded, inspected and briefed his troops, ‘Khuv’s Kommandos’, as he had named them: a platoon of top-quality infantrymen from the famous Moskva Volunteers. Thirty armed men and machines, specially uniformed (or painted) in the colours of their task: black combat suits with white discs on the upper arms, plus the usual badges of rank with the hammer and sickle sigil blazoned over. Their vehicles -five light-weight, jeep-like trucks and trailers, plus three outrider motorcycles, all for the moment waiting in the Projekt’s loading/unloading bays – were likewise black, marked on their doors and panniers with the white disc of the Gate. They bore no number plates, carried no documentation. No requirement for such encumbrances where they were going.

For the next ten days these men would sleep in a converted Projekt warehouse here ‘on the premises’; they’d be briefed, given all available details of what they could expect, shown films of the same, and intensively trained in the use of one-man flame-throwers and three larger, trailer-transported units. Their mission: go into the sphere, through the Gate, and set up a base camp on the other side. They were in short an expeditionary force.

Each man was hand-picked; they left no loved ones behind, had few friends or relatives, were all volunteers as befitted the history and traditions of their parent regiment. And they were as hard as foot-soldiers come.

From the landing at the top of the wooden stairs Viktor Luchov watched Khuv strut, listened to his voice echoing up as he paraded before the platoon on the boards of the Saturn’s-rings circumference, saw the goggled faces of the thirty where they stood at ease turning to follow him up and down, up and down, as he delivered his welcoming address.

Welcome – hah!

And would the hostile new world they were invading welcome them, too? – Luchov wondered. With what would it welcome them?

Finally the initial introduction to Perchorsk was over; Khuv handed over to his Sergeant-Major 2I/C; the men were fallen out, told to leave the core in an orderly fashion and return to their billets. They came up the steps single-file, passed Luchov and disappeared through the magmass levels. Khuv himself was the last to leave, and looking ahead up the steps he saw Luchov waiting for him. ‘Well,’ he said, as he came up the stairs to the landing, ‘and what do you think of them?’

‘I heard what you said to them.’ Luchov’s voice was cold, almost distant. ‘What difference does it make what I think of them? I know where they’re going, and therefore that they’re dead men!’

Khuv’s dark eyes were bright, less than inscrutable. There was a fever in them, which while it told of excitement refused to hint at the source. So perhaps they were inscrutable after all. ‘No,’ he shook his head, ‘they’ll survive. They are the best. Men of steel against entirely flesh-and-blood monsters. Self-supporting, working as a perfectly co-ordinated team, equipped with the best personal weapons we can given them . . . they’ll do much better than just survive. Against the primitives we know exist through there – ‘ he glanced down on the shining Gate, ‘ – they’ll appear as supermen! They’re a bridgehead, Direktor, into a new world. Oh, a military bridgehead, I agree – but that’s only temporary. One day soon,’ (and here his eyes narrowed a little, Luchov thought) ‘you, too, shall visit that other world, when they’ve made it safe for you. And who can say what resources will be found there? Who knows what wealth, eh? Don’t you understand? They’ll claim and tame that world for the USSR!’

‘Pioneers?’ Luchov hardly seemed impressed. They’re soldiers, Major, not settlers. Their prime function isn’t to farm or explore, it’s to kill!’

Again Khuv shook his head. ‘No, their prime function is to protect themselves and the Gate. To open it up, keep anything else from breaking through to us. From the time they go in, this Gate becomes literally – one-way. From here to there. That’s what I call security.’

Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 184 185 186 187 188 189 190 191 192 193 194 195 196 197 198 199 200 201 202 203 204 205 206 207 208 209 210 211 212 213 214 215 216 217 218 219 220

Leave a Reply 0

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *