Chapter 21 - The Kraken Gate
I caught hold of the step and my body swung violently below the air-train while two-hundred hands below me, tree stumps raced by where the engineers had felled a passage through the forest. The tops of the tallest trees swept past on either side. I felt my fingers slipping off the foot-plate and for a moment, imagined my body smashed to pieces among the felled trees below. Then Inigo’s hand closed over mine.
Another strong hand clamped over my other wrist, and together, Inigo and Na-Su hauled me aboard. The Omolit woman’s face was pale and drawn. The exertion had cost her.
‘Thanks,’ I gasped. The air-train’s carriages had already fallen a hundred paces behind us. Unencumbered, the engine unit was accelerating away. Two people were still on the roof though from their appearance, I fancied they were the ones that had been used as human shields. Two attackers appeared in the carriage doorway and took aim, so the three of us fell back through the door. Inigo managed to kick it closed. We heard a few shots hit the bodywork, but they had little power at this range.
We were in a tiny, cramped box whose ceiling dropped to below my head height, and an equally small door, little more than an access hatch into what I assumed would be the engine room itself. The walls were panelled with pale larkwood, less fancy than in the carriages; more functional, but still beautifully polished. The breathy whine of the turbine was louder here and the whole structure vibrated at a high frequency. Na-Su collapsed on the floor, her trouser leg and shoulder both sodden with blood.
‘I need to take a look at you.’
Na-Su only nodded which told me a lot about the extent of her injuries.
‘Inigo, try the door. The engine driver may have a first aid kit.’
‘It’s locked. They must have heard the shooting and decided to seal themselves in.’
‘See what you can do,’ I said. The boxy room we were in was so small, Inigo and I were practically standing on top of Na-Su, and there was barely enough space for her to stretch her legs out straight. I tore her trousers open from the bullet-hole at her thigh. She was lucky. There was an entry, and an exit hole on the other side. The bullet had missed her major arteries, but she was bleeding a lot. I ripped around her legging, pulling it off completely and then tore it into a couple of long strips. I folded one to make wadding, pressed it into the wounds and then bound the other strip tight around her leg. Next, I unbuttoned the front of her shirt and eased it off her shoulder to take a look. It wasn’t good. The bullet had got in under her collarbone. The trajectory, and the fact that there was no exit wound, made me suspect damage to Na-Su’s shoulder blade. This injury wasn’t bleeding as heavily as the one in her thigh, but we would need to find her a surgeon as soon as we reached Lannerville.
‘We’ll get you fixed up,’ I told her. ‘You were amazing.’
Na-Su scowled up at me. She pretended to despise compliments, but I was pretty sure it was just a show.
‘Seriously. We wouldn’t have made it off the train without you.’
‘Enough, boss! Can you fix me a sling for this arm?’
‘Sure. Inigo?’
‘Got it,’ he crowed. He’d picked the lock. Another skill he’d acquired during his time as a dealer, arguably more useful than anything he’d learned at university.
I stood and pushed through the door. My nostrils were assaulted by the reek of coal, and then the heat hit like a hammer blow. The door to the firebox was open, filling the small engine room with its roar. Sweat immediately began to bead on my face and arms. Coal littered the footplate on either side of the door I’d just come through and I realised that we’d been crouched in an access corridor that ran beneath the coal bunker.
There were two boiler-suited engineers standing between me and the flames, fists in each others’ lapels. One was small, pot-bellied with a pair of spectacles and a thin ring of hair around his head. The other was taller and stick-thin, with a large, untidy beard and reminded me of an angry postman. They were in the middle of an argument. I imagined one wanted to proceed at all haste to Lannerville while the other, perhaps the one who looked like a postman, wanted to stop and give help to the passengers. I gave them my best smile.
‘Sorry boys, we’re looking for the restaurant car.’
The engine drivers remained silent, releasing each other slowly.
‘We’re not the shooters. Well…we are, but we didn’t start it.’
‘You’re not allowed in here,’ said the short one with the spectacles.
‘Right, you can stop that officious nonsense!’ I said, marching up to them. ‘This is an emergency. We’re going to Lannerville at full speed. We are going to raise the alarm and send constables back here. Do I make myself clear?’
‘That’s what I was telling him,’ the angry postman said, pointing at his colleague. ‘We need to fetch help.’
‘What good will that do?’ said spectacles. ‘By the time anyone gets back here the passengers could all be dead! What’s going on back there?’
‘We don’t know why, but those killers are after us, not the passengers. They walked over the roof past other people to get us.’
‘Why you?’
I decided that some truth wouldn’t go amiss. ‘We’re working on a project for the Republican Council that could have implications for the war against the Nallians. Those people are trying to stop us.’
‘You think the Nallians are here already?’ This was spectacles again.
‘I don’t know, and I don’t have time to play Twenty Questions. My friend is badly wounded. Do you have a First Aid kit?’
The bearded postman lookalike fetched a box down from a shelf above the dials, glass-fronted pressure gauges and brass pipework that festooned the front of the cab surrounding the firebox. The cab itself wasn’t spacious so I bandaged Na-Su up in the tiny room under the coal bunker. I had to ease her out of her waxed canvas tunic to get her arm into the sling. While I did that, Inigo made friends with the engine drivers using the common touch he had. Before long, he was laughing with them and setting up a challenge to see who, given a turn at shovelling coal, could get the boiler’s pressure gauge deepest into the red. The turbine and propellor noise hit a new high with its shrill roar and the Forest of Yesper flashed past.
‘I told you this bad job,’ Na-Su said to me. I’d moved back into the access tunnel to sit opposite her.
‘I’m sorry. Whoever we’re up against is very determined. I had no idea what we were getting ourselves into. Perhaps this thing is too big for us.’
Na-Su laughed weakly. ‘You not unnerstan me after all this time!’
I looked at her, puzzled.
‘Good job, easy job…all boring. Bad jobs all inneresting. I stay long with you because all jobs are inneresting.’
‘Well, that’s one way of looking at it. It’s unusual for us to be the target though. We’re normally defending the target, or seeking out a target we’ve been assigned. It’s not comfortable being on the other end of the deal. This had a different feel to it from the attack in my house.This lot weren’t Nallians.’
‘No.’ Na-Su said through gritted teeth as she tried to shift into a more comfortable position. ‘Not same at all.’
‘Heavy handed, wasn’t it? Emberlanders or Caddrian mercs?’
‘Maybe, maybe paid for by Nallians.’
‘I still wouldn’t rule out Chancellor Gordon, or someone on the Council. With Lockhouse out of the way, Harman would have to give them control of security arrangements.’
‘Yes. They don’t want to destroy Gate.’
‘You’re right, Na-Su. If they wanted to stop Harman, or set the whole project back, they’d attack the facility, or eliminate Professor Maddison and the rest of his team.’
‘Why they not kidnap professor?’
‘That could be what they’re planning once we’re out of the way.’ Something clicked into place. ‘Maybe the Nallians had expected to take possession of the Koulomb Gate after they annexed Emberly. Then they had to change their plans when the whole thing was blown to Jarkisfar!’
‘Yes. Lannerville long way from Nallia. Now they have to conquer whole of Emberland to take it.’
‘So the only option left is to get us out of the way, and then what? Steal the scientists and engineers?’
Na-Su shrugged. It sounded a bit far-fetched, but I couldn’t find any other explanation for what had happened so far. I massaged my bruised neck most of the way to Lannerville.
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