Border Princes

by Dan Abnett

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Back there, did you throw a shopping cart full of crated beer the length of the store?’

  ‘Yes, I did.’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘Because I have superpowers, obviously. What the hell are you asking me?’

  ‘You didn’t then?’ asked Jack.

  ‘Of course I didn’t. I couldn’t.’

  ‘OK, then.’

  ‘Why are you asking me?’

  ‘Well, a cart got tossed—’

  ‘Arsehole!’ James shouted, and leant on the horn.

  ‘Excuse me,’ said Jack.

  ‘Not you, that van. Look, the cart rolled and fell over. That’s all it was.’

  ‘The cart rolled and fell over,’ Jack said to Gwen. ‘So, you see, that’s what it was.’

  James glanced up and looked at himself in the mirror. He was sweating. It wasn’t just the stress of hard-nosed driving.

  He was a little bit scared.

  And he couldn’t tell anyone why.

  ‘Where are we going again?’ he asked.

  Jack consulted the GPS. ‘Wrigley Street. The open ground behind it.’

  ‘Guess we’re going to find out what happened to all those missing pets,’ said James. He parped the horn. ‘Get in lane! Get in lane, you idiot!’

  Wrigley Street, Cathays. Noon. Grey clouds shooting spots of rain. Back-to-back tenements, front-and-backs, a relic of labourer’s housing.

  A blue Honda sports drew up with an ostentatious squeal of disc brakes.

  Owen and Toshiko got out. She flipped out her phone and called Ianto.

  ‘We’re on the plot. Do you have a house number?’

  ‘Number sixteen.’

  ‘Ident?’

  ‘David Gryffud Morgan. Lives alone. Pensioner.’

  ‘Thanks, Ianto. Where are the others?’

  ‘Eight minutes away, by GPS.’

  ‘Thanks. I’m going to mute you but keep you live in my pocket, OK?’

  ‘Yes, Tosh. I’m monitoring and recording.’

  Toshiko and Owen walked up to the peeling door.

  Owen rang the bell.

  ‘David Gryffud, right?’ he asked.

  ‘David Morgan. Gryffud is the middle name.’

  ‘Oh, OK.’

  The door began to open. It rattled as someone inside shook it. It was sticking.

  It opened. A tiny old man in a suit peered out at them. He had a black eye. He was one of the oldest people Owen had ever seen.

  ‘Hello, yes?’

  ‘Mr Morgan?’ Toshiko asked.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Mr David Morgan?’

  ‘Davey. Or Taff. They always used to call me Taff, even the wife.’

  ‘Excellent,’ said Owen, rubbing his hands together. ‘Can we come in?’

  ‘Are you from the MOD?’ Davey asked cautiously.

  Owen glanced at Toshiko.

  ‘Were you expecting the MOD, Davey?’ she asked.

  ‘Of course. I rung them up.’

  ‘All right then,’ smiled Owen. ‘We’re from the MOD. Can we come in?’

  Davey opened the door and limped around to let them through into the hall. They saw he was slightly scoliotic, and his frame so shrunken. So thin, like a bird. Owen thought if he stood in front of a light, they’d see his skeleton like an X-ray.

  ‘About time,’ Davey Morgan said. ‘I was at a loss. He’s very volatile, obviously. Very, very volatile. I was afraid to provoke him.’

  ‘Uh, who?’ asked Owen.

  ‘Go through, the sitting room to your right.’

  Toshiko and Owen went into the tiny sitting room. Two armchairs and a sofa. A wood-effect radiogram cabinet. An upright piano. A framed picture of the Scottish Highlands on the chimney breast. A stale aroma.

  ‘Nice,’ said Owen, looking around.

  ‘It’s all right. They’re from the MOD,’ they heard the old man say in the hall.

  ‘Who are you talking to, sir?’ Toshiko asked.

  Davey followed them into the sitting room. ‘Davey, just Davey, please.’

  ‘Who were you talking to?’

  ‘No one,’ Davey said. ‘Please sit.’ He hobbled into one of the worn armchairs.

  ‘So... Davey...’ said Toshiko, ‘how can the Ministry of Defence help you today?’

  ‘Well,’ he said, leaning forwards, ‘I suppose you’ve come to bring it in. On the nod. I understand. A thing like that has to be on the secret list.’

  ‘A thing like what, Davey?’ asked Toshiko.

  ‘Smart weapons. That’s what they’re called, aren’t they? Smart weapons? I read about them in the papers. Not the kind of war I knew, of course.’

  ‘What war did you know, Davey?’

  Davey Morgan smiled. ‘The last one. I went into Normandy with the landings. 1944. Royal Fusiliers.’

  ‘Well, that must have been quite a thing, Davey.’

  ‘Davey,’ said Owen, cutting in quickly. ‘Davey, old mate... what did you find? You said a smart weapon?’

  Davey nodded. ‘I would have thought you’d have known you’d lost it. Clever bit of kit, I’ll grant you. Talking to me. I suppose that’s computers and the Interweb and all that. I’ve been told about the Interweb.’

  ‘It talks to you?’

  ‘Of course. We’ve bonded, the two of us. Two old soldiers together. It sees my past in me, and respects it, which is nice. I have to say it’s very clever, the way you built it to do that.’

  ‘We are very clever, Davey,’ said Toshiko.

  ‘It knows me and I know it. We’re mates. I fancy I’ll miss it when you take it away.’

  ‘Of course you will.’

  ‘Thing is,’ said Davey, scratching his head, ‘as I said on the phone, it did a bad thing. Very bad. Oh, no one round here will miss them, but even so, it wasn’t right.’

  ‘Miss who?’ asked Toshiko.

  ‘The yobbos. The bloody bastards. They killed my cat, I’m bloody sure. And they gave me this eye.’

  ‘Davey,’ asked Toshiko. ‘What did this thing do to these... yobbos?’ She nodded to Owen, who got up and moved quietly towards the sitting-room door.

  ‘Stitched them up, of couse,’ said Davey. ‘Stitched them up a treat.’

  ‘Right. And where is it now?’ asked Toshiko.

  ‘In my bathroom. Would you like a cup of tea?’

  Owen had slipped outside, into the cold, narrow space of the hall. The bathroom door was ajar, letting out a bar of light.

  He pushed the door open.

  ‘Oh bloody hell,’ he started to say.

  Mr Dine felt the pull. No prior warning. Alert protocols lit up his nerves in a warm surge.

  He’d been enjoying the paintings. The gallery was pleasant and quiet, and no one bothered him. He rose from the settee in front of the Expressionists and walked towards the exit, his pace swiftly increasing.

  Investment was beginning. The upload had connected by the time he reached the street outside. Significant threat to the Principal. Jeopardy.

  But the pull was good, this time. A clean, steady fix. Definitive location.

  He began to run. As he ran, he began to invest, to recompose and to vanish from human sight.

  ‘Wrigley Street,’ said Jack. James slewed them around the junction.

  Gwen was listening to her headset.

  ‘Ianto says he’s had Tosh on the line, but he just lost her. He says the transmission’s being jammed.’

  ‘Still hot?’ asked Jack.

  ‘Smoking,’ Gwen replied.

  ‘No, no, no, no!’ cried Davey, raising a warning hand. He pushed Owen behind him. ‘It’s all right, it’s all right! He’s a friend. Don’t look at him like that.’

  A low hum. A slight change of pitch.

  ‘I think you spooked it,’ Davey whispered to Owen.

  ‘I spooked it?’ Owen replied.

  They were in the hall, with the front door behind them. At the other end of the narrow corridor ahead of them, the
thing stood there, framed in the kitchen doorway. Toshiko was out of its line of sight, just inside the door of the sitting room. She caught Owen’s eye, and made a pantomime shrug. He shook his head quickly. She couldn’t see what he could see.

  It was a human figure made of metal, thin and sharp. Its limbs were long and slender, like piston rods. Its hands were huge clusters of oily, steel hooks. Its torso, neck and head were narrow and sculptural, sleek like a missile, paint-chipped like a forgotten, unexploded bomb. The top of its ovoid head brushed the ceiling. It had no real features, just a burnished relief of lines and crests that vaguely suggested a human skull. There was a cold, tarry smell. The thing hummed.

  ‘So that’s... that’s it, then?’ Owen whispered.

  ‘Of course,’ said Davey.

  The thing stirred slightly at the sound of their voices. Electric light from the bathroom slanted across it. It took a step. The hum changed pitch.

  ‘All right, all right!’ Davey called, soothingly. ‘There’s nothing to worry about! Don’t be getting any ideas, now.’

  The hum changed pitched again.

  ‘Well, I realise that obviously,’ said Davey, ‘but you have to trust me.’

  Another pitch change.

  ‘That’s what I said. You can trust me. We’re going to sort it all out. That’s why I called this bloke round. So we can sort things out. You do trust me, don’t you?’

  The hum warbled.

  ‘That’s right. That’s right. You know me.’

  Hum.

  ‘Taff the soldier, that’s it. Now let’s be nice and calm. Nice and calm, now. Let’s sit down and have a cup of tea, maybe.’

  The thing stood still for a moment, then cocked its head slightly. Another hum.

  ‘Davey,’ Owen whispered. ‘I need you to step into the sitting room with my colleague now.’

  ‘Oh, no,’ said Davey. ‘That’s not a good idea. I’d best stay in sight. It’ll be reassured if it can see me.’

  ‘Davey, you’ve done a great job sorting this out,’ said Owen very softly, ‘but this is our responsibility now. We’ll take it from here.’

  ‘You sure?’

  ‘MOD work, Davey. Trust me.’

  In the sitting room doorway, Toshiko quietly beckoned to the old man. Reluctantly, he limped into the sitting room with her.

  Owen faced the thing.

  ‘Wotcha,’ he said.

  It straightened slightly.

  ‘Let’s not do anything rash,’ said Owen. ‘We’ve got to find a way through this situation. What I need you to do is maybe shut down, or back out into the yard. Can you do either of those things for me?’

  The thing hummed.

  ‘Yeah, whatever. Do you understand? Understand? Can you please shut down or just back away outside?’

  The thing took a sudden, purposeful step towards Owen.

  ‘Crap!’ Owen cried. His handgun came out from under his jacket. He emptied the clip on automatic. Sparks flashed and blinked across the thing’s chest as multiple high-velocity rounds struck it. And disintegrated.

  Owen eyes widened. ‘Oh, shit,’ he said.

  The thing looked at him. There was a pulse of dull yellow where its eyes should have been.

  They got out of the SUV, looking around.

  ‘Which house is it?’ James asked.

  Twenty yards away, the front door of a house vaporised in a sheet of light and wooden fragments. The blast took out the doorframe too, blew the garden gate off its hinges and stove in the side of a parked car, which promptly exploded in a belching, expanding cloud of flame.

  Pieces of glass and debris rained down. Car and house alarms all down the street began ringing and whooping.

  ‘I’m going to say that one,’ said Jack.

  TWENTY-ONE

  Acrid smoke billowed through the hallway and the sitting room.

  ‘Owen?’ Toshiko cried. ‘Owen?’

  The smoke caught at her throat and she began to cough.

  ‘Owen?’

  Davey was fumbling about behind her, dazed and blinking. The picture of the Scottish Highlands had fallen off the chimney breast and shattered on the hearth.

  Toshiko peered out into the hallway. The blast had snapped all the banisters on the stairs. The carpet was scorched, and the old wallpaper was bubbling and peeling.

  ‘Owen?’

  No reply.

  She thought about drawing her side-arm, but realised that it was pointless. Owen had proved that much, in what had probably been the last moment of his life.

  She dropped down and crawled forward, peeking out into the hallway. The front door had entirely gone, and a cold draught was stirring in through the smoke.

  She looked the other way. At the end of the hall, the kitchen door was splintered open. There was no sign of the thing.

  She got up. Something stirred at the foot of the stairs, and she pulled her gun anyway.

  It was Owen. He was curled up in a ball.

  ‘Owen?’

  ‘What?’ he answered, over-loudly.

  ‘Owen, be quiet.’

  ‘Bloody well deafened me,’ he said.

  ‘Shush. How are you alive?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘How are you still alive?’

  ‘I ducked. Onto the stairs. Jesus Christ, that thing plays for keeps. Where is it?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ replied Toshiko.

  Davey limped out into the hallway. He looked around. ‘Oh no,’ he murmured. ‘Oh no.’

  ‘Mr Morgan? Sir?’ Toshiko called. ‘Go back in the room, Mr Morgan. Please, sir. We need you to be safe.’

  Davey Morgan stayed where he was. He bent down and picked something up. The hall table had been smashed. The picture that had been standing on it had fallen and broken. Davey brushed off the glass fragments and smoothed the photo inside the frame.

  ‘Oh, Christ, I’m sorry. It’s all right, love. It’s all right.’

  ‘Davey! Sir!’

  Davey turned to face her. ‘Look what happened to my house!’ he cried. ‘Look what it did to my bloody house!’

  Toshiko went over to him and tried to calm him down. The photograph was black and white, and showed a smiling, slightly self-conscious middle-aged woman in horn-rim specs.

  ‘Davey, I have to get you clear,’ Toshiko said. ‘You have to go outside. Out the front.’

  ‘Who’s this now?’ Davey demanded, ignoring her.

  Jack hurried in through the hole where the front door had been. He narrowed his eyes and blinked at the smoke.

  ‘Everyone still alive who should be?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Toshiko.

  ‘What can you tell me?’

  ‘I think it went out the back,’ said Toshiko.

  James and Gwen appeared behind Jack. Both had side-arms in their hands, raised in ‘safe’ grips.

  ‘They won’t do any bloody good,’ said Owen loudly. He was on his feet, leaning against the wall and wiggling a finger in one ear.

  ‘Why?’ asked Gwen.

  ‘Because it’s bloody well bullet-proof,’ said Owen. ‘And if it looks at you, hint, be somewhere else.’

  ‘What happened?’ Jack called as he pushed past Toshiko and the old man and headed towards the kitchen.

  ‘I tried to defuse the situation peacefully,’ said Owen.

  ‘This would be why the lower part of this house recently exploded?’ asked James.

  ‘Ultimately,’ Owen nodded, his voice still just the wrong side of loud. ‘It was a stand-off. A matter of the first one to flinch.’

  ‘And?’ asked Gwen.

  ‘I flinched first,’ said Owen. ‘Sorry. I’ve always been a flincher.’

  ‘Get these people out of my house!’ Davey cried.

  ‘Get the old guy out of my hazard radius,’ said Jack. He stepped into the little back kitchen. It was dingy and worn. A single teacup and saucer on the drainer, a bowl of cat food on the floor, a ragged-looking jacket hanging from a peg. Jack drew his revolver, and edged towa
rds the broken backdoor. Gwen came through from the hallway behind him.

  ‘Any ideas yet?’ she asked.

  ‘That was a phasic weapon,’ said Jack. ‘Very distinctive energetic pattern. Very advanced.’

  ‘So, yeah, then?’

  ‘Let’s say I’ve got a hunch.’

  ‘Let’s say your coat disguises it well.’

  He looked at her. ‘Making jokes? Really?’

  They reached the door. The little backyard was empty. They advanced down the back path. The chorus of house and car alarms had not yet abated, and now police sirens added to the mix.

  ‘We’ll need to pull rank,’ said Jack. ‘We can’t let the uniforms near this, though they might want to start getting the street evacuated. The streets on either side too, probably. In fact, Cathays.’

  ‘Special access, right. I’ll go talk to someone,’ said Gwen. She went back into the kitchen, passing James and Owen on their way out. They joined Jack.

  ‘See it?’ asked Owen.

  ‘Uh-uh. Not so far.’

  ‘Well, it’s kind of hard to miss.’

  They went to the gate.

  It was standing in the walled lane behind the houses. Just standing, slightly crooked, as if listening.

  As the three of them stepped out of Davey’s back gate and saw it, it turned, first its head, then its upper body, then its feet, repositioning them under the rotating torso.

  ‘Oh, hell,’ said Jack, a note of genuine disappointment in his voice.

  The thing tilted its head slightly. The humming sound coming from it changed pitch.

  Where the thing’s eyes should have been, there was a pulse of dull yellow.

  The three men threw themselves sideways into Davey’s yard as a roaring cone of heat rushed down the narrow lane and demolished two outhouses and part of a wall.

  Small lumps of brick and fine grit sprinkled down.

  Owen rolled over and inched himself backwards until he was leaning against the yard wall. ‘That’s twice that’s happened to me,’ he said. ‘I’ve decided not to risk a third try.’

  James looked at Jack. ‘You know what it is, don’t you? You’ve got that look.’

  ‘I’m pretty sure I know it. I’ve seen pictures.’

  ‘Pictures?’

  Jack crawled back to the gateway and took a quick look out. The thing was walking away down the back lane slowly.

  Jack ducked back in. ‘It’s Melkene tech. A Serial G, I think. Yeah, Serial G. I’m sure of it.’