Chapter 76 - The Kraken Gate
The armoured double doors opened soundlessly into the portal chamber. I stood awhile and listened, the rest of the team at my back. The field generators were silent, dark skeletons flanking the empty platform. Half a dozen safety lanterns burned at various points around the cavern. A brace of sickly fireflies would have provided more light. Nothing moved in the control room above us.
‘I don’t like it,’ whispered James. ‘It feels like a trap.'
My instincts were telling me the same thing, but we were in the game now. I tiptoed over to where the brass terminals emerged from the battery room and was relieved to see our inconspicuous end of wire was still in place. I trimmed the ends to bare metal and twisted them onto the ends from the spool that Inigo was holding.
James, Maddison, Mahkran and Na-Su fanned out, keeping a watchful eye, in case someone jumped out at us. Mahkran had one of the crossbows, Na-Su the other, and James was wielding the axe. Maddison held a spear, but I doubted he knew how to use it.
Inigo and I moved around the room, spooling out the cable as we went, and tucking it in alongside the wiring we’d installed for the failsafe, to keep it from being noticed. We passed behind the left-hand wheel of the field generator and located a set of terminals for the copper coils that surrounded the gate. I pointed.
‘There?’
‘Yes,’ Inigo replied. He held out a hand for the wire cutter. I was just passing it to him when suddenly the room was awash with magnesium-white light as the main lamps flared into life, and Harman’s disembodied voice bounced around the room.
‘Stop there!’
Above us, lights flickered on in the control room. Harman and Jenniver Betz stood at the reinforced windows staring down at us. Just as Inigo had predicted, Ellen was with them, chaperoned as before by Jeremiah Curson and Obermann. Her hands were bound behind her back. I also glimpsed a small team of technicians working at the consoles. My heart sank. I would rather they had not been dragged into this, but there was no pulling out now. There was too much at stake.
‘Come out from behind the gate, Ms. Derringer,’ said the tannoy.
I felt Inigo take the cutters from my hand, so I stepped from the shadows, hoping that no one had seen Inigo. I moved to stand in the centre of the wooden platform that was the gate’s embarkation point.
‘You’re a bloody nuisance, Ms. Derringer! I can see why the army had to get rid of you.’ He gestured at someone behind him and the doors we had come through swung shut, locks clanking into place. We were trapped.
I held my hands up. ‘I just want to talk, Director. Surely we can find a better way forward!’
‘You’re not in charge, Ms. Derringer. Stand down and do as you’re told. This is your last warning.’
‘So you can raze Nallia to the ground and slaughter countless innocent men, women and children.’
‘There are no innocent people in war. Everyone is involved in some way. They may not be firing at us themselves, but they’re keeping the war machine provisioned or at the least, watching on while the atrocities mount up.’
‘They have no freedom to express their view, Director. You know what the Nallian police do to protesters in their country.’
‘Ms. Derringer, I have no interest in a philosophical debate on the matter. I’m set on ending the war and you’re in my way. The demise of a couple of foreign cities is a regrettable necessity, and Emberland will hail me as a hero. Put down your weapons and allow yourselves to be escorted out. This is your last chance.’
‘That’s not going to happen, Director!’ I called to him. As I spoke, I descended the platform steps to stand beside the rest of my team. ‘We will not allow you to succeed. Let Ellen go and we can negotiate your surrender.’
Harman and Jenniver laughed. They spoke for a short while, words we couldn’t hear, then Harman spoke through the loudhailer.
‘Of course, Ms. Derringer.’ He sounded smug. ‘I don’t see why Ms. Tremain shouldn’t join you. A convenient way to clear up a loose end. I’ll have Obermann put her through the hatch below us. Obermann will shoot anyone who tries to interfere with the process or tries to get through.’
‘Of course not.’
Then Harman added, ‘We will make an exchange. The professor comes to the door…alone!’
I looked at Maddison. ’Professor?’
He gave me a look that might have been some kind of apology, perhaps for his attack on me back in Emberly, then he gazed firmly up at his employer.
‘No, Director. I’m quite comfortable here. I wish you luck.’ Harman frowned. There was another brief consultation between him and his niece. He shrugged.
‘You’re a fool, Maddison, but Jenniver says she's happy to take the credit for your life’s work.’ He waved to his goons.
Suddenly, Maddison blanched. I wasn’t sure what he’d remembered, but I wasn’t paying attention, because I could scarcely believe our luck. Ellen was being released. She stepped into the chamber and the steel door below the control room slammed shut. James crushed her in his massive embrace. It was only when Mahkran tapped him on the shoulder and handed him a knife did the big man remember to cut her bonds. Once she was free, we stood in a row, all of us except Inigo who remained hidden. We looked up at Harman and Jenniver.
All the while, Maddison was tugging at my arm.
‘What is it?’ I whispered, keeping my gaze fixed on the control room.
‘The new failsafe!’ he squawked. I snatched a brief look at him. He looked terrified, enough that it was beginning to rub off on me, but I wasn’t sure what he was referring to. ‘The poison gas,’ said Maddison. He looked nervously up at the control room, and then I realised what he was going on about. It had been Benjamin’s idea to be able to flood the portal chamber in the event that it became compromised. Jenniver had mentioned it to me, but I had forgotten all about it. Had it been completed? I imagined green clouds of toxic vapours pouring in through the ventilation ducts.
Harman called down to us. ‘How touching! And now, I’m afraid it’s time for you to die. Don’t worry though. You’re a small price to pay to crush the Nallians and end the war. He signalled to the technicians, then said to us, ’Goodbye.’
There was nothing we could do. Maddison and I were the only people in the room who new about the gas. My team were about to die, and they had no idea what was coming.
We waited. Behind the glass of the control room, Harman said something to one of the technicians. He looked angry. The technician tinkered with something on the console in front of him and then looked up, fear in his eyes. Something hadn’t worked. There was another unhappy exchange, this time between Harman and his niece.
I breathed a sigh of relief. ’Well, Professor, maybe we got away with it.’
Now Jenniver approached the loudhailer and flicked the switch.
‘Nothing ever goes to plan, Connie,’ her voice blared. ‘But if there’s one thing I learned from you, it’s that one should always have a backup plan. Once we’ve destroyed Nallaxia, I’ll have the gate opened on a random point in space. You and your crew will either be sucked out into the vacuum, or asphyxiate where you stand.’
‘I wouldn’t do that!’ I shouted. Inigo had to have finished what he was doing. We were out of time.
A distant clattering noise signalled that the steam engines had been engaged and suddenly, the room was filled with a resonant humming as the dynamos were powered up. There was a smell of burning dust caused by heat surging through the huge copper coils, and the dynamos creaked into action.
‘I hope this works,’ said Professor Maddison above the rising clangour. Sweat beaded his forehead. Just then, we heard a muffled crump and the ground shook. Dust rained down on us from the ceiling.
Ellen said, ‘Aren’t we in danger here?’ She seemed very calm, for someone who had no idea what our plan was and had just been informed she was about to die. Inigo strolled across the platform and down the steps, coming to stand beside us. His nonchalance told me that he’d completed his task, and that the noise we’d heard was the charges we’d set in the tunnel.
‘Lockhouse Security are always in danger, Ellen.’ said James. ‘Isn’t that why we signed up?’
‘Sounds about right.’ Ellen reached out and took the big man’s hand.
Mahkran sat down on one of the wiring looms and leaned back on his arms, as if preparing to watch some street theatre. It troubled me that we hadn’t talked properly since I told him of his brother’s death. Gulreimian’s were a tough lot, but the man had to be suffering. He was alone now in this foreign land, away from his wife and child.
‘What just happened?’ asked Maddison, who still didn’t know the details. I tried to tell him, but just then Harman’s voice boomed from the loudhailer again.
‘What was that?’
There was no way for him to hear us above the rising din, so I just shrugged up at the control room. Harman listened to someone behind him and then turned back to us.
‘Whatever you’ve done, it hasn’t worked.’ He was triumphant. ‘As you can see, everything the gate is spinning up.’
He was right, the machinery was running faster and faster. Soon the fields would be at full strength and the portal would shimmer open. There was no sign that the water had hit the steam engines. Even Inigo was beginning to look worried. I tried to keep calm. Explosives seem like a sure way to get something done, but there’s a science to it, and maybe even a little art. There are so many variables to factor in such as the quality of the chemicals and the shape of the charge, and in this case; the type of rock, the pressure it’s already under, what’s around it to absorb the blast. Just as my own anxiety began to mount, there was a commotion in the control room, and then Harman was gesticulating wildly. Somehow Maddison had got the gist of it and translated.
‘They heard water in the boiler room and opened the door to have a look.’
‘Big mistake!’ said Inigo. Then there was a thunderous explosion. The toughened glass that looked out over the portal chamber bowed and flexed back, reverberating like the skin of a drum. It had been Benjamin’s suggestion to strengthen the windows, so he’d saved my life again.
‘Nice one, James. The engines have blown,’ observed Inigo.
Instantly, the control room became a maelstrom. Obermann and Jeremiah were swept aside by a roiling tsunami. Harman and Jenniver managed to avoid the initial surge. They backed against the glass, water swirling around their calves. I watched in fascination as the water level rose, overtopping the consoles. Some power conduit shorted out, filling the remaining air with smoke. A few heartbeats later, the lake water was up to the ceiling and Harman was swept away.
Jenniver resisted for a moment, hammering the glass with her fists in slow motion, to no avail. Ellen turned away. It was impossible to tell if the girl could see me through the murky water and inches-thick glass, but I imaged that she could. I felt inside me, trying to find some sorrow, the result of the brief bond we’d had, but there was none.
Jenniver gasped then, drawing in water instead of air. Her panic was short-lived. She slowed and then the current tumbled her gracefully from sight, her long red hair coiling sensuously about her.
‘Look!’ cried Ellen. ‘It’s Harman.’ The current had brought the industrialist back into view. He was dead. His body cartwheeled in an eddy before one of his feet got stuck in the pipework, bringing his wanderings to a halt. His silver hair fluttered and danced, as though refusing to accept its owners fate.
‘Will you look at that,’ grinned Inigo. ‘Seems that swimming isn’t always good for your health.’
We saw other bodies too, Obermann and Jeremiah Curson, and several technicians. I frowned briefly, and then remembered how many more would have died today if we hadn’t done the right thing. Maddison couldn’t stop himself from staring up at the control room, which looked like a fish tank gone wrong. He was horrified. The way you’d look if your life’s work had been destroyed, twice.
‘You didn’t say that would happen!’ he moaned.
I patted him on the shoulder. ‘I didn’t know they’d open the door to the engine room, but for what it’s worth, I’m sorry. Anyway, it’s just a bit of water, Professor.’ I tried for a light tone. ‘You’ll see… Rigsby has a whole cupboard-full of fluffy towels we can use to mop this up.’
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