Chapter 30 - The Kraken Gate
Jenniver was gone when I awoke. I felt great, but also a little bit odd. I’d had a fling with one of the girls in my final year at school. It had been awkward, nothing as fulfilling as last night, and it hadn’t ended well; a product of curiosity rather than real desire. Since then, the few times that I had felt the urge, it had been towards the opposite sex, and then Benjamin Scott had happened.
I stopped that train of thought; it would lead me nowhere useful. Just then, unbidden, Ty Rendish sprang to mind and I knew there was something I had to take care of immediately.
I washed and dressed quickly, then went in search of something to eat. Two maids were clearing the remains of a buffet breakfast from dining hall, but I managed to wrest a couple of rolls and some cheese from them. By a stroke of good fortune, I bumped into Jeremiah again. I asked him about a chapel that Inigo and James had seen in the grounds. When he heard what I had in mind, he offered to help me make some arrangements at short notice and promised to have everything ready by midday. I thanked him and went straight to the lodge’s sitting room where I’d arranged to meet my team.
It was a space large enough to fit a working man’s entire home in. Murals of nymphs bathing in suns-dappled forest pools lined one wall. Opposite them was a long stretch of glazed doors facing out onto the garden. The end walls were festooned with portraits of pompous men and preposterously barrel-chested nags. James was standing by an elaborate, white marbled fireplace reading a newspaper. Ellen was on a settle with a stack of papers laid out beside her, making notes. The Gulreimian brothers and Na-Su were looking out through the floor-to-ceiling glass doors at the spiral topiary that decorated the Great Lawn. Inigo was at the pianoforte, coaxing something operatic from the keys.
‘Sorry I’m late.’
‘Don’t worry,’ said Ellen, not even looking up from her notes. ‘You must need the rest. You’ve had a lot of excitement recently.’ It was innocently stated, but I suddenly wondered whether she knew of Dr. Betz’s visit to my room last night.
‘Thank you. Let’s get down to business, shall we? How is everyone?’ Na-Su waggled her sling at me by way of reply. The others all claimed to be well, so I sketched out how we would spend the day, and we set about our work. Ellen and Na-Su spent the morning reviewing the files on Lieutenant Scott’s platoon, which Captain Banks had dropped off at the lodge that morning. The rest of us made another tour of the Koulomb Gate facility, this time marking out with chalk where the explosives for the failsafe would go. We got some black looks from the technicians as we worked, but I couldn’t decide whether it was because they held us responsible for what had happened at Winslow Hall or whether they deplored the chalk lines that were marring their machinery. Professor Maddison put in an appearance and tersely answered our questions about positioning of the detectors. Of Dr. Betz, I saw no sign. Her work lay more in the theoretical side than practical, so I hardly expected to see her at work riveting or soldering pipework.
After we’d satisfied ourselves of the layout; incendiaries in a tight ring around the gate that would trigger first, with high explosives in a secondary, compressive outer ring, James and I fetched the boxes that had come on the land train. Ankush and Mahkran placed the explosives, installing a protective crate around each, and covering them with warning labels. Inigo worked on running the wires between the control boxes. We would install the trigger at the gate and run the flexglass conduit later on, but we would need to book some time when there would be no one trampling about, potentially damaging the fragile tubing.
After we’d all had a chance to clean ourselves up a little, we met at the chapel on the far side of the lake. Jeremiah had done a magnificent job. The place looked beautiful, with cut flowers in a hundred vases. The chaplain greeted us with a suitably respectful expression. He made the sign of Draxil and Aripole across his chest and bade us take pews.
‘I haven’t had time to prepare any words,’ he said. ‘I would normally speak with friends and relatives so that I can speak knowledgeably about the deceased.’
‘That’s alright,’ I replied. ‘Perhaps you have some standard words about the sanctity of life and Draxil’s blessings and then hand over to us?’
‘Yes, yes, of course. Please be seated and I’ll begin.’
Light from the chapel’s stained glass windows streamed down, illuminating the space before the alter where the deceased would normally be placed. The images of Draxil and Aripole hung, radiant above the altar on opposite sides of a hoop of gold, that symbolised their everdance. We listened as the chaplain spoke of Draxil’s benevolence in granting us our time, and Aripole’s care for our planet. Then he spoke about love and friendship and the importance of family in a time of war. When he was done, he nodded to me, so I stood at the front, painfully aware that the families of Ty Rendish and Edgar Finnian weren’t present. They wouldn’t have heard the news. I hadn’t yet had time to write to their families, nor had I had time to prepare their eulogies.
I said a few words about young Finnian, mostly his good humour, unruly hair and seemingly boundless energy. He’d been the volunteering kind. I recalled the time Inigo had played a practical joke on Finnian, asking him to light a candle. The poor lad had no idea which way to run when the fuse cord, that Inigo had substituted for the wick, quickly burned through the candle and across the table towards a small keg marked “Gun Powder”. That got a few smiles, but when I tried to think of something else to say, my mind went blank. I paused for a while and then moved on to Ty, who was the first person I’d recruited.
‘Anyone who tells you they can read a persons character the moment they meet them is telling a lie; it’s rarely that easy. I met Tyrone Rendish in the trenches of Kontepract. I knew straightaway that he was interesting and worthwhile. There was a light in his eyes and a quiet determination you don’t see in everyone.’
I looked back at the pews and felt sad that so few people were here to pay their respects. Tyrone had led his rangers and my squad of marines out of a Nallian ambush and he’d come back for me after I was shot. Helped me across half a league of No Man’s Land. Tyrone resigned from the rangers after the ceasefire and disappeared. I didn’t see him again until three years later, when I looked up and saw him queuing for an interview with Lockhouse Security. He said he’d seen one of the advertisements in the paper and decided to come and work with me.
‘Tyrone saved my life, and the lives of many others during the war. He was a good man; someone who cared, and that’s another thing that’s not common.’
The echo of my voice in the near-empty chapel was disconcerting. My team sat quietly in their pews. They looked as uncomfortable as I felt. I’m not a believer. Whoever Draxil might have been, if he was the Creator, he had either fled the scene millennia ago or had ceased to take an interest in the affairs of humankind. That the two stars we orbited were named after him and his consort, Aripole, was down to leftover pagan nonsense. None of that really mattered though, because I remember Ty’s faith had burned true and we owed him some kind of send-off.
‘I don’t remember the other people who queued for the job the day that Ty signed up. They didn’t make the grade. Ty was different. He sat down in the small wooden chair opposite me as though it was his favourite armchair and put his tatty hat down on the table between us. His brown, weatherbeaten smile was kind and indulgent, as though he was pleased to allow me the opportunity to interview him. Ty had a tough upbringing. He didn’t talk much about it, but we all know that he joined the merchant fleet at a young age to escape from his father’s temper. He swabbed decks, set sails, hauled anchor and pumped bilges. The merchant marine is no picnic. He saw his share of dockside brawls and, I recall, played his part in repelling pirates several times.
‘For all the violence in his life, he was the calmest person in a crisis that I’ve ever met. I didn’t know all this, that first day, but I could see that he was measured and careful, someone who would think three times before speaking his mind.’
‘Ty proved his worth in the first job Lockhouse Security ever did. You all joined the company later, but you know the story, so I’ll be brief. It was a straightforward security stakeout at a warehouse. The owner was convinced that one or two of his staff were making midnight visits to pilfer stock. Turned out it was five of them. I tried to convince Ty we should hire a few more men and come back another night. He had other ideas. They split up, as he knew they would, and so we took two of them down without the others knowing. Ty just walked up to the last three as they were bent over a crate. It was all over in a few heartbeats.’
I paused to collect my thoughts. There was a lot more that I could have said but I’m no public speaker.
‘Whatever Ty turned his hand to, he made a success of it. It wasn’t that he was skilled in everything, more like, with careful thought he could figure out how to achieve whatever task lay before him. I will always remember him though because he gave his life to save others. He would never have called it bravery. I called him brave once and he just shook his head… “No lass, I were just doing what needed to be done.”’
They were good words, but they didn’t sit well with me because Ty’s efforts had been in vain. Those who had escaped from the Charg and had made it back through the gate, including Finnian, had all died when the failsafe triggered.
‘We will miss you, Ty.’ I could think of nothing more to say, so I walked back to my seat beside Na-Su. She nodded her approval.
Ellen went up to the front and read a poem by Dormigan called ‘Ripples on the Pond’ which put a lump in my throat, then the chaplain finished up with the usual rubbish about eternal life. We trooped out and walked back to the hunting lodge. Makhran broke the silence.
‘That was a good thing, ma’am. Respectful. Mr. Rendish would have been pleased.’
‘Thank you, Mahkran. It seems a small thing to have done.’
‘What will you do with their share of the company?’ asked James. All of Lockhouse Security’s employees were shareholders. I was determined that everyone would get bonuses whenever the organisation did well. Maybe James was fishing to see if I was going to increase my own share. In the meantime, it reminded me that we still owed Finnian and Ty Rendish their pay for the previous cycle. Don’t forget to send that to his mother, Connie.
‘Well, company policy states that what they owned should go into a joint fund until we can distribute it among new staff. Do you agree with that, or would you rather we do something different.’
James nodded. It was unlikely he’d read any paperwork, but I didn’t blame him. It’s ironic, but the better the legal framework in your country, the less legible are your contracts. My father had tried to explain it to me like this, “Imagine the chaos if the language was simple enough that anyone could voice an opinion on the law.” I saw his point, but it also guaranteed that the legal profession was a closed shop… jobs for the boys, and that just made me angry.
No one else raised any objections to the redistribution of shares, so we returned to our work. Ellen and I had interviews to conduct with new members of the staff on the estate, and then there were all the files on the marines we had to wade through. Inigo had the job of mapping where each and every person on the estate was lodged, be they staff, scientist, technician, soldier. Na-Su would help him catalogue and file the information; she said she could do it with only one arm. The others were tasked with coming up with a plan to fortify the hunting lodge. I had a nasty feeling the protection would be needed.
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