Shade's Children (11 page)

The Overlords started changing the weather on the afternoon before the planned infiltration of Fort Robertson. The first signs came just before dusk, with a freezing wind rolling up the bay, chilling the water. Sleet followed for half an hour. Then the wind died, leaving the bay calm and very cold.

Ella and Drum came back indoors blue faced and shivering, after spending two hours getting the inflatable boat out through the forward cargo hatch.

They showered, donned heavy ex-Navy wet suits for warmth (two XXLs welded together by the robots for Drum), and went back out again to join Gold-Eye and Ninde in the inflatable—a matte-black dinghy with a solid fiberglass floor and bow sitting between blown-up rubber sides.

Though it was slightly warmer after the sleet, a fog was rising in its mysterious way, all around the harbor. The half moon, only just appearing on the horizon, was rapidly blanked out. The sun, setting behind the skyscrapers of the city, found gaps for its rays between the tall buildings, only to lose them in the fog. The few lights that had come on automatically around the bay were also indistinct—fuzzy balls of color rather than sharp illuminations.

“We’ll have to wait,” said Ninde, already shivering despite the full-body wet suit that made her look rather like a slim, attractive seal. “It’s too cold.”

“Fog hide island,” added Gold-Eye worriedly, looking down the length of the Submarine. He could barely see the conning tower, which was still catching the sun just above the rising fog.

“Shade wants us to go now,” said Ella. “There is some need for speed, apparently. And the fog helps us, too, remember. Now, has everyone got their crowns on? Okay—here are the batteries. Keep them out of water if at all possible. Shade tells me they should be water-resistant, but don’t count on it. Watch your swords too—this boat isn’t as tough as it once was.

“If for any reason you go overboard and can’t be recovered, try and swim back. City Tower is lit up and it lines up pretty well with here. If you can see it, swim for it. The wet suit will help you stay afloat—just drop everything else. It can all be replaced.

“When we get to Fort Robertson, we’ll tie up at the landing stage and go ashore as quietly as we can. I don’t want to depend on these Deceptor things working the way Shade thinks they will.

“Is everybody ready?”

“Yes,” replied Drum and Gold-Eye. Ninde didn’t say anything, but her shivering grew more exaggerated. Ella ignored her and pushed the start button on the outboard. It whirred into life, kicking up froth as Ella flicked it from neutral into forward gear. At the same time, Drum lifted off the bowline that was looped over a rusting projection on one of the wharf’s piles.

The spider robots had done a good job changing the outboard motor from gasoline to electric. It still performed well, as Ella discovered from her experimentation with the throttle, but now it was much quieter. She only hoped the large, plastic-sealed battery at her feet would last them there and back, as Shade had promised.

Throttling back to a safe, steady speed, the inflatable followed the Submarine hull to the stern, zigzagged among the piles of the wharf there, and then turned out into the bay. Out of the shelter of the Sub, they immediately hit some waves—but they were small. The water was surprisingly calm even for a fog-bound bay.

Calm, but with steadily decreasing visibility. The fog was thickening by the minute, the air growing warmer as the gray-white wisps fell into layers like pulled-apart wool.

Airborne mist mixed with salt spray on their faces—the only exposed patch of skin on their neoprene-suited, mittened, hooded, and booted bodies—as the boat rose nose first into the air up a line of swell and then nose first back down into the water on the other side.

Ella had planned to steer using the lights from one of the still-functioning harbor beacons and a fully lit-up apartment block on the north shore, but with the fog, neither was visible.

Slackening their speed a little and locking the throttle—just enough to keep steerageway—she pulled out a compass and checked her course.

“Gold-Eye,” she said, moving the outboard’s tiller a little to correct her course, “go up to the front and call out if you see anything. There are a few buoys—floating markers, that is—that we don’t want to run into.”

Gold-Eye nodded and edged past Drum and Ninde, keeping a careful hand on the rope that ran down the bulbous inflatable cylinders on either side of the rigid part of the boat. At the bow, he leaned forward, stomach on fiberglass and chest on the inflated rubber prow, so he could see even when they were on the crest of a wave.

“See anything?” asked Ella, increasing speed again.

“Not yet,” replied Gold-Eye, eyes blinking from the spray. A few minutes later he heard a dull, clanking noise—and something large and white loomed out of the fog only ten or twenty feet away, off to the left.

It was a white-painted buoy, bigger than their boat, anchor chain clanking dismally. Damp seagulls were clustered on it, half frozen from the sleet of a few hours before and totally confused by the sudden change of weather. One tried to take flight as the boat approached but plunged into the sea instead and was carried away on a wave like a fisherman’s lost float.

“There!” shouted Gold-Eye, his voice carrying through the quiet of the fog, making the others wince.

“I see it,” replied Ella calmly, changing course a little. “We’re about halfway there. And Gold-Eye, you don’t need to shout.”

“Sorry.”

They continued in silence for another ten minutes, the only sound the buzz of the engine and the wash of the sea around the boat as they breasted each line of swell. Gold-Eye almost spoke up twice to alert Ella, but both times he realized he was only seeing denser patches of fog.

Then the noise of the sea changed, becoming louder and harsher with the crash of swell on land. This was closely followed by their first sight of Fort Robertson, which rose up out of the sea and fog off their port side. For a few seconds they saw one of the towers, topped by a Projector, its silver sheen just catching the evening sun above the mist. Then the island was gone again, lost in the fog.

“Missed it!” muttered Ella. She opened the throttle to cut back and along the swell that threatened to pick them up and deposit them on the island. “We’ll go around and come in on the other side at the landing stage. Get ready, everyone. Ninde, see if you can pick up anything.”

Ninde nodded and began to chew on her knuckle, her silver-crowned head bent in concentration. After a few seconds she looked up, obviously frightened.

“I can’t get anything at all!” she said. “It just doesn’t work! Not from the water, because I can always get the feeling…except now…”

“The crown,” said Drum quietly. “I can’t do anything either. It has to be the crown.”

“Oh,” said Ninde, looking slightly relieved. She reached up to disconnect hers, but Ella put out a foot and tapped her on the knee.

“Don’t,” she said. “If these things work as promised, we need them on now. We can be seen from the towers, and if there are Trackers there, they’ll smell us on the wind.”

“Okay,” replied Ninde, letting her hand drop back to her lap. “I just hate not knowing what’s going on….”

“I know,” replied Ella meaningfully. “Quiet now—we’re going back in. Gold-Eye, swap places with Drum—he’ll be off first. Here we go!”

She angled the boat back toward the island, accelerating again for a quick approach. It was almost too quick. The fog and failing light made distance hard to judge, and all of a sudden the island’s wooden landing stage was in front of them, stone towers rising up behind it.

Ella flipped the outboard into reverse as they saw it, so the boat bumped rather than crashed—and Drum leaped ashore, drawing his sword almost in midair. Gold-Eye followed less flamboyantly and with greater caution drew his sword, following the big man into the shadow of one of the towers. Ninde tied the boat up while Ella killed the engine. Then both jumped out and ran across to the shadows.

A minute later the last of the sun dipped down below the horizon and the fog was no longer white. It was just dark, wet, and cold.

There were no lights on the island—or none working. And there was no visible point of entry from the landing stage. Just the steps up to the roof of the flat building that seemed to be built into the island itself. The place where the Wingers landed.

“Lights on,” whispered Ella, activating her own witchlight. “Follow me.”

Sword in one hand and witchlight in the other, she led the way up the steps. Gold-Eye followed less confidently, looking up at the towers on either side. They seemed taller here than in the picture—five or six stories at least, topped with the strange silvery spheres….

Ninde didn’t move at all till Drum gave her a bit of a push. She felt lost without her Change Talent. Even out here with all this water around, she felt sure she would be able to sense something. Particularly if the Change Projectors Shade had raved about helped; after all, there were two of them less than fifty feet away….

Drum saw her hand go to the battery pack on her belt and readied himself to stop her—but her hand passed over it and pulled a flashlight out of its loop instead. She clicked it on and moved off.

Drum shook his head and followed, ears wide open for the sudden hiss of a Ferret or the sound of some other terrible creature. Shade had said there were none here, but Drum knew many instances when Shade had proved wrong and his children had paid the price.

Back in the boat, the cover on the small compartment in the bow creaked open and a furry snout emerged. Beady red eyes focused on the figure of Drum. When he was out of sight, the rat robot scurried out and leaped ashore. A few seconds later, it was slinking up the steps.

The eastern tower had a riveted steel door leading onto the flat roof of the middle building, which the Wingers used as a landing zone. The western tower appeared to have no outside point of entry at all. It could be reached only from within the middle building—which in turn could be entered only via its own roof and the door into the eastern tower. Even the cannon ports that had looked like easy entry points proved to be shuttered tight with black-painted boards.

The tower door looked very ordinary, as if it might have come off a merchant ship in a previous life. Lines of rivets ran around the edges and across its middle, and there was a worn bronze knob above an old-fashioned keyhole. Closer inspection revealed that the keyhole was sealed—perhaps with a broken key—so there was a good chance it wasn’t even locked.

Ella studied it closely, then signaled Drum to stand so he could strike within the doorway as she pushed it open. Gold-Eye and Ninde stood farther back and slightly apart, ready to support but not so close that a net gun could mesh all three of them with one shot.

When they were ready, Ella reached out, turned the bronze knob—and pushed the door open with a vigorous heave. Drum’s sword jerked half an inch forward—but there was no one there. Just an empty room.

A very strange room. White, slippery-looking marble lined the floor—except right in the middle, where there was a ten-foot-wide hole. A corresponding hole was cut in the ceiling directly above. There were no stairs or ladders in evidence—just this vertical shaft.

Ella edged in, holding the witchlight high, still alert for some hidden creatures—but there was nothing there for them to hide in or behind.

Cautiously she went to the edge of the hole and looked up and down in one quick second, then looked again more slowly. Both views were surprising. The hole was essentially a round shaft that went up farther than the witchlight extended—probably to the top floor. It also went down—a very long way down. Ella could just make out two floors below, and it seemed to continue well beyond that. A shiver crossed her as she looked, and the image of a dark abyss stretching down for miles flashed into her mind.

She signaled the others to come in, but they were already in. Drum closed the door after checking it could be opened from the inside. Now they all gathered around the shaft, looking up and down in puzzlement.

“It’s like an elevator shaft with no elevator,” whispered Ninde. “I wonder how far down it goes.”

“I guess we’d better try and find out,” whispered Ella. “Get your ropes out. Drum, keep an eye on the door.”

Gold-Eye looked down at his equipment belt to unfasten the length of rope coiled against his hip—and his eye caught a small blinking red light at the top of one pouch. It was the light that should come on only when the battery that powered his Deceptor was at less than half charge. It had been on only for an hour….

“Ella,” he whispered, so quietly she almost didn’t hear him. “Deceptor battery.”

He pointed at the small red dot on the black case. Ella looked, then checked her own. It was also blinking red. A few seconds later, Drum’s started as well, then Ninde’s.

“Might use more power closer to the Projectors…” muttered Ella, looking up to where the Projector roosted unseen on the roof of the tower.

“How are we going to get up?” asked Ninde quietly as Ella tied their four pieces of rope together. “I can’t see anything to throw a noose over.”

“I don’t think we can,” replied Ella. “So we’ll go down, take a quick look around, and then get the hell out of here before the Deceptor batteries run out. I’ll go first.”

Quickly she tied the rope to a rusting steel staple embedded in the stone wall, tested it, and then threw the loose end into the shaft.

Strangely, it didn’t fall for a moment, but lay suspended in midair. Then the half on the far side of the shaft began to rise, while the half closest to them began to slowly fall, till there was one loop rising and one loop descending. Slowly, quite against the normal behavior of gravity.

Ella shot a look at Drum, but he shook his head and tapped the crown on his head.

“I guess it is an elevator,” Ella said to Ninde, pulling the rope back as she spoke. This time, she coiled the loose end together and threw it to the far side. It ascended almost at once, till the rope was taut and the coil was well above the next floor up.

“One half up, one half down?” whispered Gold-Eye. It was clear to him that half the shaft moved things invisibly upward and the other half moved them down.

“Obviously,” said Ninde, well above a whisper. “I said it was an elevator.”

Ella frowned and held her finger to her lips, cautioning silence.

“We can’t be sure it’ll hold our weight—or that it will always be on. So we’ll get the rope down and stick with that. Me first, then Gold-Eye, Ninde, Drum.”

It was the easiest rope climbing she had ever done, Ella thought as she climbed down. Her boots stepped through the rope in approved style—without taking any weight. She was sure that if she let go, she’d just gently drift down at a safe and steady rate.

She didn’t let go but took it slowly, pausing to scan the floor below with her witchlight. It looked just like the one above—a featureless round room with rough stone walls and a white marble floor. The only thing that was different was the temperature—it was noticeably warmer. But this floor wasn’t interesting enough to examine, so Ella continued down.

The second level down was quite different. This room looked almost like a grand hotel’s lobby, on a smaller scale. The floor was carpeted in rich red, and the stone walls had given way to paneled walls of black and scarlet. There were four doors leading off the room, one at each point of the compass—tall, wide doors with the gleam of beaten bronze.

Ella could see that the next floor below looked similar, and the next—and still the shaft went on. Clearly she was now under the level of the seabed, and Ella felt a tinge of fear as she realized that Red Diamond must have a whole underground complex here, a catacomb of tunnels and rooms. These bronze doors could lead to anything. Ferrets could have been brought in underground, so Shade’s assurance that he’d never seen any creatures flown in was worthless.

She felt an urge to abort the mission there and then. After all, they couldn’t go up to get a Projector without abandoning the safety of the rope. The Deceptor batteries were draining far too quickly, and the existence of this underground complex changed everything….

But every second of her days involved risk. And here there could be great gain.

Swinging a little on the rope, she jumped onto the carpet, boots sinking into the soft plush, and crossed to the western door. A muffled thud, and a glance behind confirmed Gold-Eye’s arrival. Ella pointed at him, cupped a hand to her ear and then pointed at the eastern door. Gold-Eye nodded his understanding and went to listen at that door, unsheathing his sword.

All the doors looked identical. Each was about ten feet high and six feet wide, with two panels so they parted in the middle. The bronze was highly polished, catching the witchlight and flashlight beams and multiplying them into butterflylike flashes that whisked around the room.

Ella heard nothing behind her door, nor did Gold-Eye. Ninde and Drum listened at the northern and southern doors. Silence.

It looked as if the two leaves of each door just pushed in at the middle. Ella clicked her fingers, summoning her troops to the western door and positioning them for a concerted rush if anything came out.

Then she pushed open the door.

It creaked at first, then eased, and Ella relaxed a little as the noise faded and nothing stirred in the darkness within. She stopped pushing and stepped back, to be ready if a creature tried to squeeze through the gap. But both leaves kept opening, and suddenly they were accompanied by the deep tolling of a bell, somewhere far below.

At the same time, witchlight flared all around them. Witchlight from the stones of the walls, witchlight flooding the shaft, witchlight bright in the corridor beyond the opening door.

A long corridor, stretching out as far as they could see. A long corridor lined on both sides with Myrmidons, sleeping at attention. Hundreds, thousands of Myrmidons, all clad in ruby-red breastplates and finely linked scarlet armor. Their helmeted heads were bent forward in sleep, so that their visors rested on the segmented plates of their gorgets.

The closest one wore the plumed helmet of a Myrmidon Master. Where all the others carried great swords or multibladed pole-arms, it cradled in its arms something that looked like a cat-sized conch shell.

The bell tolled again, perhaps only a second later, and the Master’s head snapped back. It was impossible to see behind its visor, but clearly it was awake.

It turned its head toward the shaft, put down the conch shell, and slowly, deliberately, took a tribladed axe from the unresisting arms of the nearest Myrmidon. It swung it twice, as if testing the weight, then stepped forward lightly. The ease of its movement was strange and frightening, out of place for something so big and heavily armored.

Ella stepped back, urgently signaling the others to do likewise. It didn’t seem to perceive them, so if they managed to get up the shaft…

Gold-Eye backed away, watching the Myrmidon Master the way a mouse might watch a rising cobra slowly inflating its hood. Then a faint vibration at his waist jolted his heart with even more adrenaline. He looked down at the Deceptor battery. The red light was flashing furiously, the battery buzzing its failure alert. Then the vibration stopped…and the light went out.

When Gold-Eye looked back up, the Myrmidon Master was just there, shouting so loudly, it was like the crash of a wave, with the awful axe whistling through the air—

Instinctively he raised his sword to parry, and in that same instant the Master wasn’t there anymore and his hand was numb and he was stumbling backward, screaming into the shaft.

Only Drum’s battery going flat saved him. The Master, reaching out to strike as Gold-Eye rose upward, suddenly became aware of another threat. Spinning in place, it caught Drum’s downward blow between the first and second blades of the axe, locked it, and slammed back with the butt.

Drum lessened that blow by jumping backward, meeting the paneled wall with a thud. Two swift blows from the axe butt doubled him over, and the axe was free of his sword and ready to fall. Then Ella’s sword struck from behind and came out at the front where a human’s heart would be.

Without lowering the axe, the Master turned, ripping the sword out of Ella’s hand and opening a wound halfway around its chest. The axe fell a few inches, then stopped, as if the Master couldn’t see what had driven the sword into it.

Then Drum smashed into the back of its knees, driving it down to stain the red carpet with blue ichor. Before it could rise, Drum’s sword hammered into the base of its skull. It screeched something violently in Battlespeech, then lay still, fingers twitching and feet drumming like a broken wind-up toy.

Below them the bell tolled again, and a hideously loud and high-pitched scream echoed up the shaft, going on and on long after human lungs would have been exhausted. If it had been closer, the scream would have deafened and dazed them—this far away, it was simply terrifying.

In answer to the scream, the serried ranks of Myrmidons began to grumble and twitch, wakened forcefully before their time—and the other bronze doors began to groan in sympathy as they opened.

“Forget the rope! Let’s go!” shouted Ella, helping Drum to his feet. “Gold-Eye! Gold-Eye! Go for the boat, don’t wait. Ninde—where the hell is Ninde?”

“Here!” shouted Ninde, running back from where the Myrmidon Master had stood. She was carrying the conch-shell apparatus and chewing on her knuckle.

“Leave that!” shouted Ella, practically throwing Ninde into the rising part of the shaft, with herself and Drum close behind.

“It’s important,” said Ninde distantly, still chewing her knuckle as they rose. “That Master just kept thinking, ‘Intruders must not take the…Thinker…’ or something like that. That shout before it died was the order for all-out attack. ‘Wake and kill!’ it said. Oh, it’s so clear. I can hear everything.”

“Stop listening and start running!” shouted Ella, pulling Ninde’s knuckle out of her mouth as they reached the landing-ground level and dived out of the shaft, pushing against the opposite rim to get across. Gold-Eye was still inside the tower, despite her orders, sitting on the floor cradling his right hand, obviously in shock.

Down below, Myrmidon battle sound was erupting, a sign that the creatures were fully awake and moving. They would be up within seconds, Ella knew, at the same time that she realized her hands were empty. Her sword—and Gold-Eye’s—were still down below.

“Calm! Calm!” she told herself, her breath and heartbeat so much faster than the words. But her hands, almost without thought, were already fumbling in one of her belt pouches, pulling out the grenade she’d conjured from the University Armory—and then it was plucked from her hands by Drum.

“Run!” he wheezed, the words lost in the roar from below, so she only saw what he said from his moving lips. “Winded. Can’t run. Go! Go!”

And she didn’t even think, or say good-bye, but was out and running, one hand half dragging Gold-Eye, the other grabbing at air as if this could help pull them faster to the boat.

Behind them Drum retreated out into the fog. Then he turned to the door, which cast a bright corridor of witchlight out into the white-wreathed darkness. Crouching, he laid his sword on the ground and pulled the pin from the grenade, holding the lever tight.

When the room was full of Myrmidons, he would throw it in. After that, he would have his sword…and the Myrmidons’ anger…to keep him from the Meat Factory.