Dalton tried to reply.
“To answer, you must focus on the dot.”
The damn dot, Dalton thought. He did as instructed. The dot was still now, centered.
“Now, say hello.”
Dalton tried, but he knew it wasn’t working.
“It takes time to learn. Relax.”
Dalton thought that humorous. How could he relax when he had no control?
A sharp stab of pain right between his eyes caused Dalton to start.
“Good. The computer heard that,” Hammond said.
The pain came again, but Dalton was ready.
“I didn’t hear that,” Hammond said. “You must relax and allow your emotions to pass through.”
The pain once more.
“Screw you,” Dalton projected.
There was a long pause. “We must do a series of tests now to format your program. I’m going to have Sybyl run you through a program we’ve prepared for this. Do what she tells you to.”
Sybyl’s voice was a flat mechanical one, barking out directions. Dalton did as instructed, feeling like a child as he responded, sometimes feeling a little silly.
A series of grid lines appeared. Sybyl had him focus on various coordinates. After a while, the computer guided him in moving along the grid line, a task that Dalton was able to accomplish only after many tries. He had no idea how long this went on until finally Sybyl told him he was done. For now.
Dalton felt a snap, followed by an echoing pain that slid back and forth across his head like a slow-moving tide. The pain wound down, but then he began feeling a tingling sensation in his forehead.
The dot disappeared.
The tingling turned to itching. The extent of the feeling came down his forehead, across his face. To his neck. He could feel the obstruction in his throat.
Soon his entire body itched as if armies of ants were marching across every square inch. And Dalton squirmed, since he couldn’t scratch.
But then the cold came. Worse than the most bitter cold he had ever experienced in all his winter warfare training. He’d been in Norway above the Arctic Circle on exercises with the wind chill hitting under seventy below zero, and it hadn’t been this bad.
Hammond’s voice exploded in his head. “I know you’re cold. We’re warming you up.” The volume went down during the second sentence. “We’re going to get you back on oxygen shortly.”
Dalton sensed some uncertainty in Hammond’s voice. Was this where they had had their accident and lost their man?
“It take a little bit of time to get the fluid out of your lungs, and when we start, you won’t breathe again until your lungs are clear and we can get oxygen in. It takes about two minutes. Trust us. We’ll get it done.
“We’ll keep your heartbeat slow. You can go ten minutes without oxygen at your present physiological rate.”
A fist hit Dalton in the chest. Then a drill began ripping a hole right through him. He screamed, the sound resounding in his skull but not making it out his mouth.
A claw was ripping his lungs up through his throat. Dalton felt darkness closing down as he struggled for air. The only thing keeping him conscious was the pain.
Then the oxygen came and the pain got worse, shocking Dalton with its intensity. But he could breathe. He took in a deep breath, then began choking, hacking, trying to spit.
“The machine will get the rest of the liquid out,” Hammond’s voice informed him. “Relax.”
Screw your relax, Dalton thought. He took another deep breath, relishing the feel of the oxygen as the tube fought his breathing, trying to suck out the last of the liquid on each exhale.
He was still cold, but he could tell that the fluid around him was warming rapidly.
“We’re pulling you out.”
He felt straps tighten around his shoulders as he was lifted. The fluid let go of him reluctantly, and with a sucking noise he was dangling in the air. He was swung over and lowered.
His knees buckled as his feet hit the ground. He felt hands supporting him. Arms went around him, keeping him still.
“We’re extracting the cryoprobes and thermocouples,” Hammond informed him. “You have to remain still. It will take a few minutes.”
To Dalton nothing appeared to happen, but then fingers reached under the neck seal of the TACPAD helmet. It ripped open. The helmet was lifted off slowly. Someone delicately peeled the cyberlink pad off his skin.
Dalton blinked, trying to get oriented. All he saw was white. He closed his eyes for a few seconds, then opened them again. This time he could make out hazy forms around him. He shook his head, clearing his vision a little. Staff Sergeant Barnes was still holding him up. Dalton slowly regained control of his legs. He looked about. Dr. Hammond and Raisor were standing at the main control console.
There were three bodies in other tubes.
“Damn it, I told Anderson to wait until I was done,” Dalton said, his voice hoarse and cracking.
Barnes frowned. “I know, Sergeant Major, but you were in there five hours and they said they had to get this thing going.”
Five hours. To Dalton it had seemed no more than an hour. His throat hurt where the tube had been. He shivered and Barnes draped a blanket over his shoulders.
“You okay, Sergeant Major?”
“Yeah, I’m all right. Whole bunch of fun,” Dalton said. He stared at the other men in their isolation tanks. He could see one of them quivering inside the green liquid. Under the blanket he peeled the suit off down to his shorts.
“Geez, Sergeant Major, what happened to your back?” Barnes was looking at the bare skin the blanket didn’t cover. A jagged scar six inches long reached up from the waistband of his shorts. The skin was rough and purple.
“Bayonet,” Dalton said.
“Bayonet?” Barnes repeated.
“It’s a long story from a long time ago.” Dalton shivered once more, violently, as if the cold would never leave his bones.
“Here,” Barnes held out a cup of coffee.
Dalton took it, wrapping his hands around the mug, grateful for the warmth. He walked over and stared into the closest isolation tube. He recognized the body in the tank: Staff Sergeant Stith, the demo man.
“How long have they been in?” he asked Barnes.
“They put the first one in two hours after you. Stith just went in twenty minutes ago. Captain Anderson was the first one after you.”
Dalton stared through the glass at the body floating in the green liquid. He shivered once more, but not from the cold.
The town of Markovo lay one hundred kilometers south of the Arctic Circle, centered in the land mass just north of the Kamchatka Peninsula, in the far eastern wasteland of Russia. This practically unknown and almost uninhabited land beyond Siberia was one step removed in the wrong direction from the worst stretches of hinterland on the planet.
The population of the town was less than five hundred hardy souls, half of them natives, the other half the progeny of political prisoners who had survived the local gulag long enough to bring forth life. The inhabitants of the gulag had dug out, under the year-round ice, the holes that now held the prefab components of Special Department Number Eight’s Far-Field Experimental Unit— SD8-FFEU.
It was set underneath the tip of a rounded mountain that overlooked the town. One narrow road switchbacked up the side of the mountain, ending at two massive steel doors that led down into the station. Signs at the start of the road and circling the mountain at the base warned that intruders would be shot without warning.