Free A Fear of Dark Water by Craig Russell

floorboards were coated with plaster dust, grime and general filth.
    A girl of about twenty, with lank blonde hair and bad skin, waited for him at the end of the hall, by the foot of the stairs.
    ‘He’s waiting for you.’ She tilted an acned chin up the stairwell. ‘Second door on the right. Go straight in. Were you followed?’
    ‘I wasn’t followed.’
    ‘Are you sure?’
    ‘I’m sure.’
    The fact was that Niels did not only follow the protocols of the Guardians of Gaia regarding security, he had a routine that was ten times more elaborate than that which the Guardians demanded. He never explained his routines, because his need to defend himself against impostors sounded bizarre to others. The girl nodded and Niels made his way up the stairs. Despite having been told to go straight in, Niels knocked on the door before entering.
    It had, at one time, been a bedroom. A pretty grand one. Now the windows had been boarded up from the inside, making the room a large, sealed box. But there was more light in here than anywhere else in the derelict house: artificial light from the desk lamps placed around the room. It did not have the clutter or detritus evident in the rest of the house: the floorboards had been swept clean of dust and cables taped to them; there were three workstations set against the wall to Niels’s right, each with a large computer monitor, and he could hear the distinct monotone hum of the five large hard-drives. The sight of the technology made Niels want to vomit. It represented everything that the Guardians of Gaia were fighting against, a complete negation of the organisation’s eco-anarcho-primitivism. But Niels knew, for he had been told by the Commander, that such technology, abhorrent as it was, was essential in carrying out the war against the forces of pollution and globalisation.
    The theory did not help Niels with the reality: the irony was that, had it not been for the scruffy walls and boarded-over windows, this room could have been an office for any Hamburg business.
    But it wasn’t. Straight ahead of Niels as he entered was a large desk at which sat the Commander, a heavyset man in his late thirties with a head of thick, curling black hair. To the Commander’s left, to Niels’s consternation, sat a couple dressed in grey business-type suits. Both the man and the woman looked as if they had walked out of a bank or insurance company and Niels noted that they shared the same expressionlessness.
    ‘Sit down, Freese,’ said the Commander.
    ‘Who are they?’ Niels nodded towards the couple.
    ‘Friends.’
    ‘Are they members of the Guardians?’
    ‘This is a war with many armies, Niels. Our friends here are allies. They fight for Gaia just like us, on the same side as us, but on a different battlefield. More than that need not concern you.’
    Niels stared at the couple. They stared back, but without aggression; without anything in their expression. Why were they dressed like that? Niels did not like their suits in the same way that he did not like the computer hardware in the squat. For a start, where had it come from? Where had the money to pay for it come from? There again, he thought, it could be that the Commander had had it stolen to order. The idea cheered him a little.
    ‘The Globalist-Polluters are creating their own doom,’ continued the Commander. ‘ Our doom. Even their own scientists are talking about a Malthusian Cataclysm, about the Great Die-Off … so they are not blind to the catastrophe that they are shaping every day by chasing the Myth of Progress. They cannot say they don’t know the consequences of their actions.’
    ‘A Malthusian Cataclysm would not be a bad thing, Commander,’ said Niels, eagerly. ‘Humanity is a pestilence that needs to be controlled if Gaia is to survive.’
    ‘Mmm …’ said the Commander. ‘In the meantime we have to do all we can to wage this war. Our fight is the greatest battle in the history of mankind. While we sit