Chapter 1 - The Kraken Gate
Nighttime shattered and window frames rattled as a deafening, monstrous roar washed over the city. My first thought, as I leapt out of bed, was that the peace accord with the Nallians had broken down and their airships were ranging unopposed in the skies over Emberly, dropping bombs. My second thought, as I raised the sash and looked out over the rooftops towards the roiling purple-orange mushroom cloud that rose like an oily stain above Rostov Park, was that I had successfully obliterated my place of work.
Shock set in. My extremities went cold as I dressed. My numb fingers struggled to button my blouse. In spite of my trembling hands, I managed to pull on my standard issue army surplus slacks and wrestled my straw-coloured hair into a ponytail. Downstairs I fumbled with the laces on my boots, then straightened up and looked in the mirror. I tried to persuade myself that I looked like a woman in control. My bone-white face, coupled with the mad wisps that had escaped the hair grip, made a mockery of that idea.
Well done Connie! I thought. How many people have died because of the failsafe you designed and helped to install? I’ve been responsible for the death of other people before. Those previous occasions had left me feeling sick; this time was no different. I closed the door behind me, locking it as silently as I could, though the notion that my housekeeper had slept through the explosion was preposterous. A few brave residents had ventured out onto Holbein Crescent to see what was afoot. I set off to find out who I had slaughtered.
Meniah was bright in the night sky, her daughter moon a bluish speck off her shoulder. The pale light she cast over the streets of Emberly was welcome as, at three bells, the gas lamps had long been extinguished.
I rounded a corner not long after setting out and nearly collided with a tall dark man. He had shoulder-length ringlets of black hair and gold earrings framing a noble face, casually handsome, although his nose was flattened, as though an argument with a door had gone badly, several times. In fact, it was the result of a hard upbringing that had forged the fighter I knew him to be.
‘Ankush,’ I croaked. ‘Was that Winslow Hall?’
The Gulreimian nodded. ‘You OK, ma’am?’ What he meant was ‘You look like shit!’ but he was professional to a fault. I waved away his concern.
‘What in the name of Draxil’s Blessing was that?’ The failsafe we had built consisted of twenty pounds of incendiary with a containment charge of twelve pounds of hi-ex; not enough to have caused the noise that had woken the whole city of Emberly.
‘I don’t know, ma’am, but I was lucky. I left shortly before to deliver a message to Director Harman at his house.’ If Ankush was in shock there was no sign of it, as though his inscrutable good looks refused to be spoiled by base emotions. ‘Director Harman sent me to fetch you.’
‘Sure he did, but I’ve got to see the damage for myself first.’ It wasn’t a big detour, and Harman wasn’t likely to go anywhere soon. His life revolved around three locations; the research facility at Winslow Hall, the restaurant at the Grand Hotel, and his home. One of those was closed at this time of night, one was a smoking pile of rubble which only left the third option. Ankush Malek turned and we set off at a brisk pace. More people were in evidence now, hanging out of a good number of top floor windows. Plenty more were standing in the street, gazing at the thick smoke that was drifting across the face of the moon. Fear was writ large in their shocked expressions. It was understandable; the newspapers had been screaming ‘Nallian Attack Imminent’ for many cycles.
‘Brief me, Ankush. What do you know.’
‘There was trouble on the other side. Kandesh said the away team had been attacked. Sounded pretty bad. Kandesh screamed for the gate to be shut down, according to protocol, but Professor Renny overruled him, certain that Porter and Finnian weren’t far behind.
‘Ty Rendish?’ I breathed, not wanting to know.
‘Kandesh claimed that Ty had created some kind of diversion to buy them time to escape.’
I nodded, even as my stomach lurched. ‘The diversion wasn’t enough.’
‘I guess not, ma’am.’
I drew my jacket closed over my blouse. Summer it may be, but there was a chill to the night that wasn't wholly down to my fear that worse was yet to come. Ty Rendish was the best operative in my team and he was either dead at the tentacles of the Charg, or blown to smithereens because of the failsafe I’d installed. Edgar Finnian, recruited to Lockhouse Security a mere three Meniah-cycles ago was also dead, not at the tentacles of an alien, but because of the device we had all installed. We’d never laugh at his mussed-up sandy hair and grinning exuberance again.
‘Then what?’
‘Hamish sent me to get Director Harman. I’d gone no more than half a mile before the explosion happened.’
‘And Harman sent you to fetch me.’
We skirted Yardlan. The hunched industrial district's steam looms and loco-presses were eerily silent, giving the impression of a slumbering leviathan. To our left, the iron framework of the air-train marched west across the rooftops, dimly visible through the pall of smoke and dust. Suddenly we were in a throng of people, many holding lanterns, as curious to see what had happened as we were.
The crowd slowed as we approached Rostov Gardens, treading carefully to avoid the ragged lumps of masonry and broken branches that blanketed the road. Shattered windows gazed at us accusingly. The shocked silence of those who arrived before us was broken by the sound of coughing, no doubt caused by the dusty atmosphere. Someone was sobbing to our right, towards Bayfleet Close. Here and there, individuals who had been just outside the blast radius sat, bewildered, or staggered directionless, some covered with blood, while well-meaning new-comers tried to help. There were no fatalities in evidence but they were there, somewhere under the crushed bricks and mortar.
Across the ruins of what had once been a pretty square lay the remains of the research facility. A gentle breeze was beginning to clear the air. My nostrils were full of the smell of sulphur and charred dust. In Meniah’s baleful light I gazed upon my handiwork. The one-time hospital complex in red brick and Empire curlicues was now a jagged, blackened wreck, like an elderly beggar’s teeth.
I shouldered my way to the wall that fronted someone’s home and climbed up onto it to see over the throng. Ankush stood patiently beside me, unfazed by the devastation. I was pretty sure he had seen a lot worse than this. Gulreimia was one of those unfortunate nations that was blessed with a wealth of natural resources and an overabundance of acquisitive, warlike neighbours.
From my perch, I could just see beyond the broken façade of Winslow Hall, but of the repurposed Corrosarium that had stood in a central courtyard, designed like a prison to keep the patients and their rotting disease in quarantine, I could see nothing but a gaping hole in the ground. A two-story building with five basement levels had turned into a massive, smoking crater. The destruction was orders of magnitude greater than I had intended.
‘Any sign, ma’am?’ Ankush’s voice pitched low. No one around us would pick up on the concern in his voice, but I knew he was referring to the far greater horror that the explosives had been designed to contain. I surveyed the area as best I could. The air was clearing, but night still wrapped its cloak around Emberly. My breath caught in my throat once as something crawled across the rubble. Wisps of smoke, Connie. Relax, it’s just wisps of smoke rising from the bomb-site.
‘None,’ I answered at last and climbed down. There was no point lingering. Soldiers would be here soon, setting up cordons and generally getting in the way, accusing random citizens of being Nallian saboteurs. I spat dust. ‘Let’s go, Ankush.’
In fact it was three constables and a brace of fire wardens with their water carts and pumps who arrived on the scene just as we departed. They would begin the search for survivors. They would find none within the grounds of Winslow Hall; our failsafe had seen to that.
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