Colony by Benjamin Cross (best way to read books .TXT) 📕

gush of blood was now a trickle. He wrapped his arms tightly around Fenris’s body. Burying his face into the side of his friend’s neck, he spoke softly to him in Nganasan until the flow stopped altogether.

Callum hugged onto Darya as she wept against his shoulder. Ava slumped to the floor beside them and dropped her face into her hands.

The minutes ticked by before Lungkaju’s head rose up and he took a deep breath. By now the sun’s rays were beating their way through the mist, carving the remaining vapour into pockets around him.

He turned from Fenris to face the others. His eyes were red, his bronze skin streaked with blood. He reached a shaking hand inside his parka, withdrew his flask and took a deep draught.

“I told him it was just bad dreams.”

Chapter 12 Lazarus Taxon

1

Peterson burst up out of the swell. Before he could take stock, the current had thrust him against the side of the natural harbour. He scrabbled for a hold. His fingers dug in and he clung on as a second swell tried to grate his body like a lump of mozzarella up against the rock. As it receded, he took his chance and hauled himself up the side.

His sense of déjà vu was immediate; he half-expected Volkov to be stood smoking in the shadows once again, to step, laughing, from the gloom and finish him off with a voice-distorted cackle and a bullet to the head. But this time there was no cigarette end. He was alone and the white sub was nowhere to be seen.

After blacking out and falling into the water, the freezing temperature had shocked him back to consciousness. His instinct had been to resurface immediately for air. But he had fought it. The last thing he’d wanted was to be fished, defenceless, out of the swell by that monster Volkov and tortured into complicity. He’d rather have drowned. Fuelled by a mixture of panic and rage, his mind had worked quickly. He had propelled himself under the Centaur, feeling his way towards the anchor point. Then he had slid between the nose of the craft and the natural harbour.

He didn’t have long. That much was obvious. He was bleeding, freezing and drowning all at the same time. Without a chance in hell of seeing anything through the dark water, he began a desperate clawing around the Centaur’s hull. He knew exactly what he was looking for, but unless he found it soon, it would all be over.

His lungs clamoured for air as his hands scrabbled across the metal panelling. His fingers searched and searched, finally catching against a shallow indent. He tugged at it, and it pulled down to form a handle. His heart leapt. He searched out the second handle. It too pulled down and he grabbed both, twisted them and forced the hatch open. He felt the rush of the water as it flooded into the cavity, urging him with it, and he squeezed himself in through the gap.

As long as the Centaur was upright, the chamber had been designed to only partially submerge in the event of a breach. In true scientific fashion, it was less an issue of buoyancy for the sake of the crew, and more one of preserving the delicate internal systems; research first, people second. As his head burst up into the pocket of air, Peterson couldn’t have cared less why it was there. He just gulped it down, lungful after heavenly lungful. All the while he clung to the upper of three wide storage ledges, the same one, he noted darkly, on which he had stored the explosive all those weeks ago.

He mustered what strength he could and dragged himself clear of the water. The image of Doctor Lebedev’s shivering, hypothermic body still fresh in his mind, he began removing his wet clothes. The proximity of the engine meant that the air inside the chamber was warm against his skin. He was lucky. Ordinarily, the temperature would have been artificially lowered in order to preserve whatever samples had been taken.

No longer drowning or freezing, he turned his attention to the bullet wound. It was pitch dark inside the compartment, but he could feel that the bullet had passed through the strait of flesh between the bottom of his ribcage and the top of his pelvis. His grasp of human anatomy was pretty damn weak. He knew that one of his kidneys was probably somewhere in that area. The side of his guts too. But to what extent either had been damaged, he had no idea. He started by using his undershirt as a compress. God only knew how much blood he’d lost already.

There was a sudden thud above him and he froze. As he listened in silence, the sound was followed by a series of lighter thuds that could only have been one thing. Footsteps.

Peterson could feel his already pounding heart beat faster at the thought of that psychopath Volkov boarding his sub and dicking with his controls. He needed to calm down or he would quickly bleed out. He took a deep breath and fought to clear his mind. Nam Myoho Renge Kyo, Nam Myoho Renge Kyo, Nam Myoho Renge Kyo…

There was a burst of hammering, no doubt as Volkov began ransacking the place. It was clear what he was looking for: the data stick from which the virus had been uploaded. He’d want it so that he could get his people to design him an anti-virus. If the pain in Peterson’s side hadn’t been busy reaching climax, he’d have laughed. The thought of him leaving something like that just lying around in the sub was plain ridiculous. It may have looked like a shitty little hunk of plastic, but it was anything but. What its circuitry contained was just about priceless.

The noises got louder and louder as the futility of the search seemed to dawn on Volkov. The clanging culminated in a series of loud bangs as he kicked out