Ravenor Rogue Read online

+No time to explain. Get them clear, Patience. That’s all I ask.+

  Kys ran to Ballack and grabbed hold of him. His eyes were blank. He was being puppetted by Ravenor.

  ‘I’ve got him!’ she cried.

  Ravenor let Ballack go, and he slumped. Thonius looked dead. He was covered with blood. The House shuddered again, and slipped. The deck pitched wildly.

  +Gideon!+

  Something detonated above them. The House rocked.

  +Get them clear, Patience! Get them to the underboat while there’s still a chance!+

  Kys sucked in her breath and took hold of Ballack and Thonius. She carried them, more with her tired mind than with her arms, down the steps onto the walkway, and then down again into the burning hell of the chamber’s floor space.

  +Please come with me!+ she sent back.

  +I’ll follow. Angharad is still through there. I’m ’waring her. I can get her out.+

  Up on the top platform, Ravenor swung around to face the doorway.

  +Come on. Come on.+

  A black and white form pounced at his chair. He blew it apart with his cannons.

  Kys reached the hoist and dropped Ballack and Thonius onto its platform. She reached for the lever.

  +Gideon!+

  +Go, Patience! I’ll be right after you!+

  Kys threw the lever. The hoist began to descend.

  Kys heard a scuttering, scrabbling sound. She looked up.

  Five of the glossy, black and white monsters were racing down the sheer walls of the riser shaft after her, limbs rippling as they tore down the soot-black sides of the drop.

  Shotgun raised, Lucic took another step up the spiral staircase. The House shook again, violently. That was bad, and he knew it. The House was reaching the end of its existence.

  Lucic aimed his shotgun up into the darkness of the stair shaft. He was sure he’d heard something above him, something descending.

  He couldn’t see anything. He lowered his gun. Reaching into his back pocket, he took out his stablight and flicked it on. He shone the narrow beam up into the gloom.

  Nothing. Except... teeth.

  Something above him yapped.

  Hiram Lucic made a frantic grab for his shotgun.

  Kys grabbed Ballack’s laspistol and fired it up at the monsters scurrying down the shaft after them.

  It snapped dead. It was spent. She reached frantically into his pockets for a fresh clip.

  The hoist was descending too slowly, far slower than the scurrying monsters.

  Carbine raised in one hand, lamp in the other, Plyton stepped into the drum chamber. She could hear the hoist trundling down.

  A loud, rattling crash came from the direction of the spiral staircase. She stepped closer to investigate. It was her shotgun. Her shotgun had just fallen down the spiral staircase onto the deck. The last time she’d seen, it had been in Lucic’s possession.

  With slow, nauseating horror, Plyton realised that an astonishingly copious amount of blood was streaming down out of the roof hatch.

  Swallowing hard, Plyton cinched the carbine over her shoulder and picked up her shotgun. She backed away from the staircase towards the base plate of the hoist, keeping her shotgun steady. She tried to watch both: the staircase and the hoist, as soon as it appeared.

  The hoist dropped into view. Kys was crouching at the centre of the platform, with Ballack and Thonius sprawled on either side of her.

  ‘Maud! Maud! Shoot!’ Kys screamed, pointing up the shaft. Plyton leapt up onto the hoist platform between Kys and the unconscious men. She fired upwards, blindly pumping shot after shot up into the dark. Kys dragged Ballack and Thonius off the hoist behind her.

  Kys looked back. She had a prickling feeling that Plyton had hit something. Kys reached out and jerked Plyton backwards off the hoist with her telekinesis the instant before three ruptured, flopping bodies crashed down onto it out of the shaft.

  Plyton got up, staring at the dead things. ‘What the hell are those?’ she asked in total revulsion.

  ‘We’ve got to get back to the boat,’ Kys barked, ignoring the question.

  ‘Where’s Ravenor?’

  ‘He’s coming.’ Kys hurried forward to throw the lever and send the hoist back up, but it was dead. Noxious bio-acid leaking from the burst throat sacs of one of the dead things had reduced the motor to metal goo.

  ‘How is he coming?’ asked Plyton. ‘What about Nayl and swordgirl?’

  ‘He’ll use his psi,’ Kys replied. +Gideon, the hoist is out of action. Gideon?+

  There was no answer. Kys dragged Ballack to his feet. He was coming around, groggy. She threw Thonius’s limp body over her shoulder.

  ‘Come on!’ She started off towards the service tunnel, dragging Ballack after her, stumbling and confused. Plyton fell in behind her, moving backwards, shotgun raised. Something black and white scuttled down the spiral staircase, and smiled. She blasted it apart.

  The deck had twisted to a sharper angle, and the House was rattling with a constant shudder. Metal groaned and protested. In the docking pool, the water was boiling up through the wharf decking, a mass of froth and pressure. The underboat, still anchored by one sea chain, was bucking and thumping violently against the dockside fenders in the immense swell.

  Using telekinesis, Kys shoved Thonius’s body unceremoniously across and in through the side hatch. Then she jumped across with Ballack. They nearly slipped off into the surging water, but she braced them with her mind and they scrambled in through the hatch.

  The pilot servitor had already closed the top hatch.

  ‘We have to leave. Right now,’ he told Kys.

  ‘We’re not all here,’ she replied, moving back to the side hatch.

  ‘If the House goes,’ the servitor replied, ‘it’ll take us with it. We won’t have clearance to exit the dock pool. Cut the chain loose.’

  ‘We’re not all here yet!’ Kys yelled at him. ‘Get to the helm and get ready!’

  The pilot servitor scurried forward. She heard the fans start up and test-rev. She got to the hatch and looked out. Plyton had remained on the dock side, and was standing with her back to the pool, watching the approach from the service tunnel.

  ‘Maud?’

  ‘No sign!’ Plyton yelled back over the roaring water and squealing metal.

  +Gideon?+

  Nothing.

  Plyton was suddenly shooting. The gritty boom of her shotgun rang out again and again. Over a dozen of the creatures were scurrying out of the service tunnel towards her. She killed two of them.

  ‘Maud!’

  There was a sudden, stomach-flipping lurch and the House tilted even more sharply, throwing Plyton down. A curious, deep moaning sound began. It was coming from the pool. It was the sound of water, stirring in vast quantities. The house had dipped so steeply, the air bell of the docking pool had lost its integrity, and oceanic water was surging up into the pool bay with shocking speed and fury. The docking pool was flooding.

  ‘Maud!’

  Plyton rose on the sharply inclined decking and leapt. She hit the side of the see-sawing underboat and Kys dragged her in through the hatch. Scrambling, slipping, half-falling, the chattering things came after her.

  Kys slammed the hatch shut and heard hooks clang and scrape against the outer hull.

  ‘The sea chain!’ the pilot servitor shouted at her. ‘What about the sea chain?’

  The colossal power of the ocean answered him. The force of the flood lifted the underboat, slammed it against the metal dock, and then yanked it away. Black and white bodies tumbled away into the boiling water. The remaining sea chain caught, strained, and parted with an explosive crack.

  Released, the underboat rolled, righted, and fought the rising, crushing energy of the sea. The pilot blew air ballast and gunned his cavitation drive and attitude fans.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Kys screamed.

  ‘We have to get out!’ the pilot servitor yelled back.

  She lunged forward, but stopped h
erself. What could she do? Force him to stay? Kill him?

  Even if they stayed, what could they accomplish? The House was flooding, and was minutes, maybe seconds, from losing its foothold forever.

  Patience Kys was a supremely capable, confident woman. She could do many things, against almost any odds.

  But she couldn’t beat this. She was helpless. They were helpless. The ones they’d left behind, if they weren’t dead already, were doomed.

  +Gideon!+ She sent with such anguished force Plyton and Ballack winced.

  There was no answer. There would never be again.

  Four

  Nayl woke to find himself in hell.

  He was sprawled in the bottom floor space of the theatre chamber. The deck was at an almost forty degree slope. His head pounded and his throat hurt. He remembered Worna grabbing him.

  He rose, swaying. The area around him was alive with leaping flames. His coat was on fire. He took it off and threw it aside.

  He made his way over to the hoist, but it was gone, and the black riser shaft stared up at him.

  There were bodies on the ground, two of Worna’s hired guns. They looked as if they had been snipped clumsily into pieces by giant scissors. He helped himself to the shotgun one of them had dropped.

  Something moved in the flames nearby. A dead-eyed horror with a rictus smile leapt out of the dancing fire to kill him.

  No hesitation. His newly acquired shotgun barked, and punched it back where it had come from in a drizzle of purple fluid.

  Fighting the sloping deck, he reached the lower steps and got onto the walkway. There was no one around, no one alive, anyway. He saw four more dead from Worna’s band, the corpses of two housekeepers rent limb from limb, and the crumpled forms of three more things like the one he had just wasted.

  ‘What in Throne’s name are these things?’ he muttered.

  Nayl clambered around the walkway, leaping over a missing section of deck that looked as if it had been burned away by acid. He made it to the upper steps. Serious-sounding explosions thumped somewhere outside the ruined chamber. The whole place was on fire.

  He crawled up onto the sloping upper platform. The roof dome above was a riotous inferno, and flames from below were searing up around the metal disk of the platform. The doorframe was still standing, the door open and swinging, the red light of somewhere else shining through it.

  Ravenor’s chair sat facing the door. It was scratched and battered, punctured in places. Clear fluid was dripping out of it.

  ‘Ravenor?’

  ‘Is that you, Harlon?’

  Nayl staggered over to reach him.

  ‘What the hell is going on?’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Ravenor replied, his voxponded voice frail and thready, as if the system were damaged. Or as if he were damaged. ‘I’m very sorry. We’re not getting out of here.’

  ‘Where are the others?’

  ‘Kys has made her way out. She took Carl and Ballack with her. I hope they made it to the underboat. I pray they did. I keep calling, but I’m very tired. My mind is weak. I can’t reach Kys.’

  ‘What about Plyton?’ Nayl asked.

  Ravenor sighed.

  ‘What about Angharad?’ Nayl said more firmly.

  ‘I’m still trying. She’s there, I can feel her. But...’

  ‘Gideon? For Throne’s sake, is she still in there?’

  ‘I’m waring her. She... she kept them at bay. She’s still fighting them. I don’t know how much longer she can last. She’s an amazing woman, that Arianhrod.’

  ‘You mean Angharad.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You mean Angharad.’

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  Another explosion rocked the chamber. Nayl stepped towards the door. ‘Angharad!’ he yelled into the red light. ‘Angharad!’

  ‘Wait, Harlon,’ Ravenor whispered. ‘Wait, she’s...’

  Something moved on the other side of the door. Backlit by the red glow, a figure limped into view.

  Angharad. She was covered in blood and smears of purple ichor. Her leather armour was torn, and hanging off her in places. Her long steel smoked. She walked slowly out of the doorway onto the platform, leading the housekeeper guide behind her by the hand, like a child.

  ‘Oh Throne!’ Nayl cried, running to them. The door slammed shut in its frame behind them.

  With a sob of pain and exhaustion, Ravenor let Angharad go. She swayed, but she was conscious. Blood dripped from her mouth. Nayl tried to hold her, but she pushed him off. She took two long steps towards Ravenor’s dented chair and rested the tip of Evisorex on its front cowling.

  ‘You bastard,’ she rasped. ‘Without my permission. Without my permission! You were inside me. You were me.’

  ‘I apologise,’ said Ravenor.

  ‘You have violated my honour and the honour of my clan. You were inside me! I alone choose who gets to be inside me! That was mind-rape! I should gut you for this offence and–’

  ‘I apologise,’ Ravenor repeated. ‘I did what I had to do. Ballack and Thonius may be alive, alive right now, because of what I did.’

  Angharad sank to her knees and let Evisorex slip to the deck. She shook with wracking sobs. Nayl crouched beside her and held her.

  ‘But as a consequence, we are doomed,’ said Ravenor. ‘I am so very sorry I have brought you to this end with me. The House is flooding and dying. There is no escape.’

  ‘There’s got to be,’ said Nayl, looking up. He suddenly pushed Angharad away and leapt upright with his shotgun raised. A black and white shape, tail high, had just crept onto the upper platform behind Ravenor. It stole forwards, claws scratching off the deck plates. It raised its head, sniffing and yapping, its tongue stabbing out between its teeth.

  ‘Same to you,’ said Nayl, and killed it with a single shot. Its thrashing body flew backwards off the platform. Nayl looked around at Ravenor. ‘There’s got to be a way out.’

  ‘I can’t find one,’ Ravenor replied. ‘I have been searching. I’m right, aren’t I, housekeeper?’

  The housekeeper looked up sharply. Its cowled head had been bowed. It was toying with the key in its hands with grazed, bleeding fingers.

  ‘Yes,’ the housekeeper replied. ‘We have no boats, no escape pods. When the House dies, we die too.’

  ‘That’s a load of–’ Nayl began.

  ‘Harlon,’ said Ravenor calmly. His fatigue was so great, he could barely summon the effort. ‘When the House dies, it will let go of the ice above. It will fall, and when it falls, it will fall into the abyss. What was it Lucic called it? Wholly Water, Harlon. Without a measurable bottom. In a minute or two, the water pressure will crush the House like an egg. Even at my best, I couldn’t protect us, certainly not long enough to get us back to the surface. Even then, the ice... and, as you may have noticed, I’m not at my best.’

  ‘The Plyton woman was right,’ said Angharad softly. ‘This place will kill us more surely than the void itself.’

  ‘No,’ murmured Nayl. ‘Screw this, no. We don’t just give up and wait to die.’

  ‘Sometimes, that’s a warrior’s fate,’ said Angharad. She picked up her steel and wiped the blade before sheathing it. The blade was stained and bruised with acid.

  ‘Balls to that,’ Nayl snapped. ‘That’s fancy warrior talk. I’m a paid gun. We think percentages. I don’t worship any frigging honour code. Lu was right about that. About me. I worship chances, edges, survival. We have a way out.’

  ‘No, Harlon,’ Ravenor sighed. ‘We’re done.’

  Nayl glared at Ravenor. ‘We have a frigging way out!’ he insisted. ‘We still have one way out left to us.’ He nodded towards the door.

  ‘Absolutely not,’ said Angharad with a shudder. ‘You haven’t seen what’s through there.’

  ‘You have.’

  ‘That’s why I won’t go. It’s death.’

  ‘You survived it, lady.’

  ‘Barely.’

  ‘We can survive it together.�
��

  ‘It’s death, Harlon Nayl,’ she said flatly.

  ‘So is this,’ he said. ‘I’d rather die fighting for a chance than roll over and wait for death to get me.’

  The Wych House shuddered again, and tilted more steeply. They had to hold on. Nayl looked down. Through the mesh of the platform he could see black water pouring up through the riser shaft to flood the floor space below them. Fires, caught by the swirling water, guttered and went out.

  ‘Last call,’ he said. ‘Who’s with me.’

  Angharad raised her head and wiped the blood from her mouth. She drew her sword. ‘I am, I suppose,’ she said.

  There was a long pause, broken only by the death throe explosions of the House.

  ‘So am I,’ said Ravenor. He turned his chair to face the housekeeper. ‘Come with us,’ he said.

  The housekeeper nodded.

  ‘We need your key.’

  The housekeeper nodded again.

  ‘What’s your name?’ Ravenor asked.

  The housekeeper slowly lowered the hood of its gown. It was a she, a young girl barely into adolescence. Her face was thin, pale, and fringed by cropped, blonde hair. ‘I am Iosob,’ she said.

  ‘I am glad to know you, Iosob,’ Ravenor said. ‘Open the door for us.’

  The girl raised her ancient key and fitted it into the lock. It turned, and the door opened. Nayl and Angharad stood beside her, weapons raised and ready.

  The door opened. Gunshot red sunlight glowed out. They all recoiled at the alien smell.

  ‘Let’s go, if we’re going,’ said Harlon Nayl, racking the slide of his shotgun.

  They stepped through the door, and it slammed shut behind them.

  A second later, the Wych House died.

  They were being shaken around like beads in a drum. Thunderous water had entirely flooded the docking pool, but the upthrust of current was such that the underboat couldn’t right itself or dive. Twice, the boat slammed into the dock roof. Water seethed around them, aspirated, shimmering with bubbles. Kys, Plyton and Ballack had all been cut or bruised by impacts sustained from the underboat’s violent capture. Thonius, dead, as far as Kys was concerned, had fallen off his bench seat. He rolled, leaden, across the trunk flooring.

  Only the pilot servitor, strapped into his chair, was intact.