Clean downstairs,he said. And my ELINT block is clear. Looks like nobody’s home.

We need to be sure,choma replied. Check out the upper floor. I’ll back you.

Sinon stood up, shouldering the machine gun. He took out a fission blade and sliced through the window frame, cutting out the lock. Raindrops sizzled on the glowing blade. The next two serjeants in his squad had already reached the house when he slipped inside. He pushed out a heavy breath from his lungs, the nearest he could get to a sigh. Actually out of the rain. Its impact was diminished to a dull drum roll on the roof. Choma splashed down into the thin mire beside him.

Hell, that’s better.

Affinity made Sinon aware of the rest of the squad; two of them were in the neighbouring houses, while the rest had started to spread out along the street. My ELINT’s still clear,he said.

Choma looked up at the ceiling, pointing his machine gun at it cautiously. Yes. I’m pretty sure there’s nobody up there, but we’ve still got to check.

Sinon made his way out into the hall, machine gun held ready. How can you be sure? You don’t know what’s up there.

Instinct.

Crazy.he put his foot on the first step, sandal sole making a squelching sound against the sodden carpet. We’ve barely got imagination operating inside these neural arrays, let alone an intuitive function.

Then I suggest you work one up fast, you’re going to need it.

Sinon turned so he could cover the landing as he ascended. Nothing moved except for the unending water, glistening as it ran down walls, curdling across carpets and tile floors, dripping from furniture. He reached the main bedroom, its door ajar. His foot kicked it hard, dinting the wood. The door slammed back amid a shower of droplets. Choma was right: it was empty. In every room, the signs of panicked departure. Drawers ransacked, clothes scattered about.

Nobody here,sinon reported to the squad when they cleared the front bedroom. Other house searches across the town were also proving negative as the squads moved in.

Ghost town,choma said, chortling.

I think you could find a better phrase.he looked down through the window, seeing squad members scuttling along the road outside. They were going against the flow of mud, their legs churning up deep eddies. Things were trundling along the street, carried along by the relentless current. Bulges in the smooth mud; there was no way of telling if they were stones or crumpled twigs. All of them moved at the same speed.

He held up a sensor block, panning it round in search of anomalous hot-spots. The image was overlapping his actual field of view, which meant he was looking straight at the house on the other side of the street when it exploded.

A serjeant had cut through the lock on a side door and crept cautiously inside, machine gun held ready. The ground floor must have been clear, because a second serjeant followed him in. Thirty seconds later four explosions detonated simultaneously. They were carefully placed, one at each corner of the house. Long flakes of concrete and lumps of stone shot out of the billowing flame. The whole house trembled: then, its crucial support destroyed, it collapsed vertically. Windows all along the street blew out under the impact of the blast wave. Sinon just managed to twist away in time, allowing his backpack to take the brunt of the flying shards.

The affinity bond boiled with hard, frantic thoughts. Both serjeants in the house were hammered by the explosions, their bodies wrecked. But the tough exoskeleton withstood the searing pressure for a few moments, long enough for the controlling personalities to instinctively begin the transfer. One of the orbiting voidhawks accepted their thoughts; then the house descended on their already weakened skulls.

“Shit!” Sinon yelled. He was curled up on the bedroom floor, aware of something being wrong with his left forearm. When he brought it up to his face, the exoskeleton was cracked in a small star pattern. Blood was seeping out of the centre. Rain lashed in through the empty window, washing the crimson stain away.

Are you all right?choma asked.

Yes . . . Yes, I think so. What happened?he stood up, peering down circumspectly onto the street. The mud and rain had swallowed almost all the immediate signs of the explosion. There was no smoke, no dust cloud. Just a pancake of rubble where the house had stood moments before. The tide of mud was already frothing round it, bubbling eagerly into cracks.

Choma pointed his machine gun along the street, radiating satisfaction that the squad had merged with the scenery. He knew where they were, but they weren’t easily visible. Where are they? Did anyone see where the white fire came from?

He was answered with a chorus of: No’s.

I don’t think it was white fire,sinon said. he ordered his block to replay the memory. The gouts of flame spearing out of each corner were orange, and they came from inside the house.

Sabotage?choma said.

Could be. They were perfectly placed for demolition.

They were on their way down the stairs when the second house exploded. It was on the far side of town, being examined by one of the other squads. One serjeant was killed, another two were injured beyond any field medic’s ability to patch up; they needed immediate evacuation. The rest of Sinon’s squad stood back as he clambered up over the mound of stone and girders which had been the house. When he was clear of the mud he ran a sensor pad over the exposed rubble close to one of the corners. The rain was washing the mess clean, but the chemical analysis still had enough residual molecules to work with.

Not good,he announced. This wasn’t white fire. There’s a definite trace of trinitrotoluene here.

Sod it!choma exclaimed. The bastards have booby trapped the whole town.

Parts of it. I doubt they’ve got the resources to rig every building.

But you can bet they’ve done the critical ones, as well as picking on houses at random,he said grudgingly. It’s what I would’ve done.

If you’re right, we’re going to have to treat each building as potentially hazardous. And we don’t even know what the trigger is.

I doubt it’ll be electronic. Our sensors would spot active processors, and the possessed wouldn’t be able to set them up in the first place. We’ll have to get some of the marine engineers in here to find out what kind of mechanism they’re employing.

Sinon’s response was lost amid a burst of anguish within the communal affinity band. Both of them instinctively turned to the west. The death of another two serjeants was all too clear. A warehouse in a town called Holywell had just exploded.

It’s not just here,choma said. Ekelund’s people have been busy.

Confirmation that most major towns around the periphery of Mortonridge were booby trapped came in to the Ops Room throughout the afternoon. Ralph sat in his office assessing the reports in a state of weary disbelief. Progress schematics were being revised on a fifteen minute basis by the AI. Their original timetable was constantly rearranged, targets being pushed further and further back.

“Truly amazing,” he told Princess Kirsten during the evening’s briefing. “We’re fifteen hours in, and already twenty behind schedule.”

“Conditions are pretty foul under there,” Admiral Farquar said. “I don’t see Ekelund’s people having a better time of it.”

“How would we know? Fifteen hours, and we haven’t had a single encounter with a live possessed. Christ, I mean I know no battle plan survives contact with the enemy, but no one ever said anything about it disintegrating before we even catch sight of them.”