Chapter 15 - The Kraken Gate
Dusk was beginning to settle as we made our way back to Perdido Street. I’d never heard of Armeda Shipping before, but whatever was going on inside, I was pretty sure that the transportation of innocent goods via sea was low on their list of priorities.
The office looked abandoned when we got back. Ankush and I checked all the rooms, cupboards and filing cases then locked up, but nothing had been left behind. I posted the keys through the letter box as per the landlord’s instructions, then Ankush and I joined the others for a drink at the Parched Peacock, an unpretentious tavern nearby that we made use of occasionally after work. Na-Su and Inigo were tucked into a booth looking moodily into their drinks. I wasn’t surprised, it would be hard to imagine two people less likely to hit it off at a party. Inigo was bookish, risk-averse and considered in all he said. Na-Su, like most of her race, embraced danger, and was outspoken on almost any subject.
‘You did a great job on the office,’ I said to them when Ankush disappeared off to the bar to buy a round. ‘It looks like we were never there.’
Inigo nodded. Na-Su looked like she was scowling, but I knew better. She had something on her mind, so I tipped my head in a quizzical fashion which was enough to set her off.
‘We cannot take metal through gate, yes?’
‘Yes, but we’ve known that for a long time, haven’t we?’ They’d looked through the portal on the first successful acquisition – what the boffins called it when their apparatus managed to latch onto a planet. They’d also thrown a stick through on the end of a rope and when that had come back in one piece, they’d coaxed a goat through, also retrieving it using a length of rope. On the second acquisition, they tried to send people through, and that had gone disastrously wrong thanks to the metal objects they’d been wearing or carrying.
‘But some metals alright?’
‘Yes. It’s only ferrous metals that are dangerous,’ said Inigo. ‘Ones that magnetos will stick to.’
I remembered now. Renny told me how they’d experimented with grains of iron, steel, copper and lead when they acquired the planet for the third time. A careful investigation of the next away team had revealed the hidden dangers in the supplies. Even boots had to be specially procured to avoid ones assembled with nails.
‘Good, then we make weapons from wood and flint and brass. Easy!’ Na-Su gave me a triumphant grin that reminded me of the mouth of a shark I’d seen once, sprawled on the deck of a fishing vessel. ‘What weapons we need?’
‘Daggers and maybe a cutlass of two. We need some ranged weapons too. What can you do?’
Ankush returned with a tray of drinks. Ridgeflower cordials for him and his brother, a dark ale for me, a double whisky for Inigo, and a glass of Na-Su’s favourite fire-root liqueur.
‘I have idea, boss. My people hunt for long time without firearms.’
‘We’re leaving tomorrow. What can we get at such short notice? It sounds like this is a custom job.’
‘I order tomorrow before we go. They send to us in Lannerville.’
‘There’ll be plenty of time’ said Inigo. ‘The new gate needs to be tested and calibrated first. It’ll be at least half a cycle before it’s ready for anything to go through.’
‘Assuming they even get it working,’ I added. The one we’d demolished had taken seven years to build and get right. If I had understood Professor Maddison correctly, there were a lot of fiddly parameters and settings. No two Koulomb gates could be identical. The Professor had said that the equipment was sensitive to local gravity in its area and that, apparently, was fractionally different wherever you chose to locate the portal.
‘I have more ideas,’ Na-Su still looked like a cat that’s eaten all the mice. I waited.
‘Well?’
‘In case brass no good.’
I sighed, sensing that I would have to drag the information from the Omolit woman. ‘Alright then, what ideas?’
‘I not sure you like. Make first, then you see.’
Well, that’s a first. Na-Su was worried about the reception these new weapons of hers would receive. She didn’t normally hold back when she had outlandish ideas, after all, this was the woman who had once breached the defences of a Nallian rotunda using an automaton cow packed with explosives.
‘Alright,’ I conceded. ‘Just remember that there’s a limit to what we can take through the gate.’
‘What is limit?’
‘Only what we can carry,’ Inigo said. Na-Su immediately looked crestfallen but nodded.
‘Only what we carry,’ she agreed.
‘One more thing I need from you Na-Su. A couple of telescopes, good ones.’
‘We already have telescopes, yes?’
‘Yes, but I’m pretty sure they’ve got metal components.’
‘No problem. I take apart, then rebuild with brass or other replacements.’
I pretended to pin a medal on Na-Su’s chest. She just scowled, so I switched my attention to Inigo. He’d been somewhat subdued since Ankush and I had pitched up. I had the feeling he was worried about something. When I questioned him, he wasn’t particularly forthcoming.
‘It’s nothing, ma’am,’ he insisted. He ran a hand through his floppy black hair and sighed, ‘I don’t like big open spaces…’ His voice tailed off. He stared at his hands and tried again. ‘I’m a city boy. I don’t even like the parks. I…I had to cross Tellemarch once and…’
Inigo swallowed and looked sheepishly across at Na-Su who was studiously watching the far side of the tavern. She didn’t do touchy-feely stuff, and her people lived out in the open, so I sensed it was beyond her.
‘…I think I’d rather be back in prison,’ Inigo finally admitted.
I knew Inigo better than he thought. One of the conditions under which he was released from penal reform into my care was that I keep tabs on him. In the early days after Inigo’s release, I had hired a couple of street-smart youths to report on his movements, just in case he’d decided to make a run for it. They had noted his reluctance to cross open spaces.
‘We’ll be back before you know it,’ I said, following the line I’d held with my housekeeper. Inigo didn’t look convinced, so I reached across the table and put my hand on his sleeve to show that I was focused entirely on him. ‘If we’re still there in three cycles and you’re unhappy, you can come back and reopen our Emberly office. We’ll need someone here to look for new work in the city. None of us want to stay in Lannerville long-term.’
‘Thank you.’
‘Don’t mention it. And, for what it’s worth, I think you’ll like Lannerville. The air’s cleaner…no factories belching filth into the air. Also, Harman’s mansion is huge, so you can lose yourself in there if you feel uncomfortable outside.’
I had no idea how open-ended our work in Lannerville would be, but I also hoped we would not be there long. My father had put a brave face on things when I had told him that I would be unable to visit for a while, but I knew he would suffer. There were two or three inmates he socialised with and he managed to stay out of trouble with the gangs, but the loneliness was killing him, little-by-little.
‘Have you all settled matters with your landlords?’ I asked Ankush and Mahkran. Na-Su shared a place with a fellow Omolit and had arranged to continue to pay rent while she was away. Inigo lived in a small garret which had been easy to let go of. The brothers had a more complex arrangement. There were very few Gulreimians in Emberland. Their homeland’s proximity to and largely peaceful coexistence with Nallia meant they were treated with suspicion and some hostility in the big cities. It had not been easy for them to find a rental prepared to take them on. In the end, their embassy had been forced to intervene as guarantor on a contract with strict break clauses.
‘All is well, boss,’ replied Mahkran. ‘We continue to pay the rent. It is not a problem.’
‘Are you sure?’
Ankush shrugged. ‘We will have to rethink things if Director Harman decides to start charging rent while we stay in his place; until then, we have the money.’
Pleased to learn that everything was settled, I left the others to their drinks while I acquired a pen and paper from the barmaid and sat down at an empty table to write a letter. The Ministry of Comportment needed to know that Inigo and I would be unable to continue our scheduled meetings at the Hall of Justice, so I requested transfer of the appointments to their Lannerville address, and gave them Harman’s estate as our correspondence location. If they proved difficult, I would have to appeal to Director Harman to pull some strings, that or get him to fund return tickets to Emberly so that we could fulfil our obligations. Finished, I returned to the booth where my team were and arranged to meet them at the air-train the following morning, then I left for the daily meeting with Director Harman.
It was nearly ten bells of the evening when I arrived at the industrialist’s home. The night was dark, with an autumnal chill in the air. Obermann turned me away, his manner polite, but curt. Harman had been summoned to meet with the Council and wouldn’t be back until much later. All I could do was hand the butler a note that I’d prepared, asking the director to request files on all of the marines who would be joining us in Lannerville.
Exhausted, I went home and climbed into bed, and fell instantly into a deep sleep from which I was awoken by a piercing scream. It’s hard to describe, but the noise made by a person whose life is in real peril sounds very, very different to all the other noises a human makes. My housekeeper, Rosanne Underhill was in trouble.
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