From Hell With Love: A Secret Histories Novel

by Simon R. Green

  I was still fighting alone on the lawns, surrounded on all sides by Accelerated Men. I cut them down with my golden blades, over and over again, my arms and my back aching fiercely; and still they came. I could feel sweat running down me, inside my armour. Fight long enough, and I would collapse from my own human weaknesses, long before the armour would wear out. Because the armour only augments the man inside it; he still has to do the fighting. But I had already decided, quite calmly and rationally, that I would fight till I dropped, would die on my feet, inside my armour, before I would stop fighting, as long as one Accelerated Man remained.

  The intruders streaming through the glowing circle suddenly had new weapons in their hands—strange bulky guns they turned on everyone who wasn’t them. They strode forward, firing indiscriminately into the Droods before them, and I heard shocked and startled screams, as Droods were thrown to the ground by bullets that could pierce Drood armour. I saw one defender rolling on the ground, clapping an unbelieving hand to the blood flowing down his golden side, from the ragged hole in his armour. I saw blood spurt from a featureless golden mask, as a bullet punched through his forehead. More and more Droods lay screaming and dying on the bloody lawns, brought down by bullets that pierced golden armour as though it was paper. A bullet whined past my head, and I crouched down instinctively, because I thought I knew what those guns were, what they had to be.

  I’d only seen one, once before, in the hand of my late Uncle James. He’d had a gun made by his brother, the Armourer, a gun specially designed to fire strange matter bullets. The only kind that could pierce Drood armour. The Armourer swore he’d made only one, and had it destroyed, but I’d been told a lot of things that had turned out not to be true after all.

  All around me Droods fell, spurting blood and screaming for help that never came. The rest of us were far too busy just trying to stay alive. I glared about me, not knowing what to do for the best. The Accelerated Men with the new guns were pouring through gaps they’d opened up in our ranks, and it wouldn’t be long before they reached the golden wall, and forced entry into the Hall . . .

  I reached out to make contact with Ethel. “You have to do something! Those guns are using strange matter!”

  I know! said Ethel. It’s my strange matter! Those guns are tearing it from me, by brute force!

  “What? How is that even possible?”

  I don’t know! It shouldn’t be possible! And Eddie—some of those bastards have taken enough to make blades out of strange matter!

  The Armourer and the Sarjeant-at-Arms were working together to target the invaders with the strange matter guns, taking them out as fast as they could identify them. Through the dimensional door came the next wave of Accelerated Men, brandishing swords and axes of glowing strange matter. The Droods swiftly reorganised, urged on by the Sarjeant-at-Arms, as the last of the enemy with the new guns crashed to the ground, or exploded messily as their Kirlian aura was ripped away. The Droods moved steadily forward to meet the Accelerated Men, with glowing golden swords protruding from their armoured hands.

  Droods and supermen slammed together, and fought fiercely under the early morning sky. Duels broke out, with both parties moving at incredible speed. Golden blades crashed together, and both sides stamped back and forth on the muddy, bloody ground. The Droods quickly took the upper hand, because they were experienced in the use of sword and axe, and the Accelerated Men weren’t. Superhuman strength and speed is no match for experience and training. The invaders had skill, and the raging fury of the Drug, but the Droods were fighting to protect their family.

  And that made all the difference.

  Men with glowing axes came running out of the thinning mists towards me. I had time to remember the strange matter arrow that had pierced my armour, fired by an elven lord, and just how much that had hurt . . . but that just made me angrier. I smiled a death’s-head grin inside my mask, and went to meet the enemy with long glowing blades protruded from my hands. I’d seen too many Droods die. First the Matriarch, and then my Molly, and now . . . I wanted to hurt the enemy, and kill them, and make them pay and pay and pay . . .

  As I was moving forward, a pair of gryphons appeared out of nowhere, hit an Accelerated Man from both sides at once, and then hauled him down. They tore him to pieces, and then ate the pieces. They could do that, because they could see a short distance into the future, and see where the Accelerated Men were going to be. From the blood that streaked their flanks and dripped from their muzzles, they’d been doing this for some time. The sight disturbed me. I was used to seeing the gryphons as ugly, playful creatures. It had been so long since anyone had dared launch an attack on the Hall itself, I’d forgotten the gryphons were part of our defences.

  Drood reinforcements arrived, swooping down from above on all kinds of flying machines. A semitransparent flying saucer swept silently overhead, strafing the approaching intruders with blazing guns, blowing great bloody holes in the ranks of the enemy. Young men on autogyros flew jerkily back and forth above the battle, dropping homemade incendiaries. Fires burst out all over the lawns, and blazing Accelerated Men ran madly back and forth as the flames consumed them. Young women on winged unicorns soared gracefully in the sky, dropping shrapnel grenades. The shrapnel couldn’t pierce Drood armour, but it cut through the running enemy like razored winds. One Accelerated Man shot a hang glider out of midair. The Drood pilot cut himself free, aimed carefully, and dropped out of the sky onto the Accelerated Man like a living bomb. He hit the intruder perfectly, and drove him into the ground like a nail into wood. After a moment, the Drood climbed out of the hole and moved away, shaking bloody mush from his golden armour.

  Everywhere, Droods were fighting savagely, stopping the advance of the Accelerated men and even driving them back, for all their superhuman strength and speed. The strange matter guns might have made a difference, if the Armourer and Sarjeant-at-Arms hadn’t made a point of targeting their owners and blowing them away. And while the strange matter blades could cut through Drood armour, mostly they never got the chance.

  I went to meet the Accelerated Men with glowing axes, and cut them down, blood flying on the air as my blades gutted them, sliced throats, and cut off heads. I was tired and I was slowing, but I was still death on two legs, a Drood in his armour, and all the awful pains in my back and arms, all the heaving lungs and bone-deep weariness would not stop me. I killed everyone who stood before me, and felt nothing, nothing at all, save a cold focused determination.

  I was glad Molly wasn’t there, to see me like that. Reduced, to that.

  I stopped, for a moment, to get my breath, and looked around me. The lawns were soaked with blood and gore, and churned up into crimson mud. It squelched under the heavy feet that trod it, and was littered with piled-up bodies for as far as the eye could see. The Accelerated Men had come in their thousands, and they had died in their thousands, and the only compassion I had was for the Droods lying dead alongside them. I looked back and forth, and it seemed to me that the number of Accelerated Men was quite definitely dropping.

  There were hundreds of them now, rather than thousands, reduced to small groups surrounded by cold and murderous Droods. None of the Accelerated Men had got past the golden wall. I looked at the dimensional door, and my heart rose as I realised no more of the intruders were coming through. They’d finally run out of warm bodies to dose with the Drug and throw ˚ at us. I made contact with the Sarjeant-at-Arms, via Ethel and our torcs.

  “Sarjeant; any chance we could get some of our people through that dimensional door, before they shut it down? See who or what is on the other side?”

  “Excellent idea, Edwin,” said the Sarjeant’s calm, unhurried voice. “But I can’t spare anyone. The Hall must be defended. The family must come first. Feel free to jump through and take a look for yourself, if you can get close enough.”

  I strode forward, through the scattering Accelerated Men, cutting down anyone stupid enough to come within reach. One threw himself at me, screa
ming hysterically, trying to pry open my golden armour with his superhuman strength. His hands scrabbled uselessly against the gold, his finger bones breaking, and in the end I just threw him aside. He hit the ground hard, his back snapping, and just lay there, crying. I should have stopped long enough to give him the coup de grâce, but I had more important things on my mind. Later in the day, that lack of basic mercy would upset me. But not then.

  I was only a dozen feet short of the great glowing circle when the enemy decided on one last desperate, despicable tactic. A final wave of Accelerated Men burst through the dimensional door, carrying large reinforced pouches strapped to their chests of backs. They ran at the Hall with the best speed their superhuman strength could provide. Something about those pouches bothered me, and I reached out lazily, putting out a straight golden arm in the path of one of the runners. He slammed right into it, and my golden arm did not budge one inch. It whipped the runner off his feet and put him on his back in a moment, his chest caved in. He looked up at me with a shocked, surprised face, fighting for breath, and actually struggled up onto his feet again as I closed in. I punched him in the chest as hard as I could, and blood shot from his mouth as my fist emerged from his back. I pulled my hand out, and he collapsed immediately, as though that was all that had been holding him up.

  He took his time dying, but I had eyes only for the reinforced pouch strapped to his chest. I ran my hands over it carefully, checking for trip wires and booby traps, and then gave in to my impatience, and just ripped the thing open. And inside, was a small but perfectly functional nuclear device. Big enough to take out the Hall and a hell of a lot of the grounds around it.

  “It’s a nuke!” I yelled to the Sarjeant. “It’s a bloody nuke! All these new arrivals are suicide bombers!”

  “They only need to get one inside the Hall,” said the Armourer, his voice cutting in sharply. “The Hall has protections against an outside nuclear assault, but not inside . . . Never thought we’d need it. And even if we keep the bombs outside the Hall, and they detonate just one in the grounds, think about all the Droods out here fighting . . .”

  “Could our armour protect us from an atomic bomb?” I asked Ethel.

  I don’t know! What’s atomic?

  “Terrific,” I said.

  “Even if we should survive the blast, about which I for one have severe doubts,” said the Armourer, “the grounds would still be utterly devastated, a radioactive nuclear nightmare for generations to come!”

  “Well then,” I said. “Let’s not let that happen.”

  “I can’t use the Kirlian gun!” said the Armourer. “In fact, any of our weapons might set the bloody things off!”

  “There is another way,” I said. “Something I used once, to stop Archie Leach from using his Kandarian amulet.”

  “And if it doesn’t work?” said the Sarjeant.

  “See you in Hell, Cedric,” I said.

  I placed both my hands on the backpack nuke, and concentrated hard. The strange matter of my golden armour spread out slowly, completely covering and enveloping the nuclear bomb in a casing of golden armour. The bomb was now effectively inside my armour, with me. If it went off, the armour should contain the blast, and the radiation. Of course, I wouldn’t be around to see it, but . . . Anything, for the family.

  Molly? It’s me. See you soon, love.

  I could see other Droods getting the idea, dragging runners to the ground and enveloping the nukes within their armour. Inside of a few moments, there wasn’t a single suicide bomber left in control of his bomb, just dead runners and Droods who’d taken the bombs inside their armour. Presumably breathing heavily and sweating hard, just like me, as we waited to see what would happen. I was just a bit flattered to see that one of them was the Sarjeant-at-Arms. It was nice to know he had such faith in me. I screwed my eyes shut, half cringing in anticipation of the detonation I’d never even feel . . . but the seconds dragged on, and nothing happened. Slowly, I realised that if the bombs were going to go off, they would have done so by now.

  It’s all right, Eddie, said Ethel, her voice bright and bouncy again. The activation signal couldn’t get through the armour, and I’ve already sent strange matter into the bombs, to disrupt the timers. You can come out now; the bomb’s perfectly safe. So, that’s atomic . . . nasty little weapon.

  And then, finally, one by one the Accelerated Men started to fall over. Aging, withering, dying, as the Drug used up the last of the energies that drove them. None of them had got anywhere near the main entrance to the Hall. The dimensional door slammed shut, before any of us could reach it. And just like that, the assault was over.

  One by one, we armoured down. I stood up slowly, leaving the deactivated bomb at my feet. I took a deep, deep breath, and the cool morning air tasted good, so good. The man who’d strapped the nuke to his chest had died, somewhere along the line. I couldn’t bring myself to care. All over the lawns, exhausted men and women stumbled back towards the Hall, and family. Dead bodies lay sprawled everywhere, in the crimson mud and churned-up grass. Most of them were Accelerated Men, but not all. We’d lost a lot of good men and women, this morning. They would be avenged.

  “Get the nukes down to the Armoury, and I’ll take them apart,” said the Armourer. He was standing not far from me, looking tired and a lot older. He glanced down at the Kirlian gun in his hand, as though he couldn’t remember what he was doing with such a thing, and then he grimaced, and made the gun disappear. “I want the Accelerated Men, too. We need to know more about this damned Drug. I’ll have my people run some autopsies, see what we can find. And then . . . I’ll make us a whole new batch of scarecrows, to defend the Hall.”

  I’d never seen him this mad, this vicious. It was easy to forget that the kindly old Armourer had once been one of the most feared field agents, of that coldest of Cold Wars. And truth be told, I couldn’t find it in me to feel any remorse, for what was in store for the fallen enemy. They shouldn’t have threatened the Hall, the family, the children.

  The Sarjeant-at-Arms came over to join us. He was puffing heavily, but all things considered he looked quite cheerful. The man was in his element.

  “No one’s tried to nuke us since the Chinese, back in the sixties,” he said. “We must be getting close to something really important, if they want to stop us this badly. Whoever’s behind this.”

  “Could be Doctor Delirium, could be Tiger Tim, could be both of them working together,” I said. “They’re the only ones we know are definitely linked to the Apocalypse Door. But where did they get all those people? Or those incredible weapons?”

  They took my strange matter from me! said Ethel. By force! That’s . . . impossible!

  “Nothing’s impossible, for the Immortals,” said the Armourer.

  “Hush!” the Sarjeant said immediately. “Not in public!”

  I looked at him thoughtfully. “You still going to try and arrest me, Sarjeant?”

  “No,” he said. “My investigations have cleared you of all involvement.”

  “Well,” I said. “That’s nice. Now all I have to do is clear you as a suspect.”

  It was worth it all, to see that look on his face.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  The Only Good Traitor

  The Armoury had come alive again. Blazing bright lights, people running back and forth, lab assistants crowded round every workstation. Everyone was talking at once, when they weren’t shouting, and from the look of it every lab assistant from every shift was back on duty. The Armourer and I appeared through the Merlin Glass, and everyone immediately stopped what they were doing to point a whole series of really nasty-looking weapons at us. I stood very still, while the Armourer beamed happily about him.

  “Well done, very good, nice reaction times everyone, but we are not the enemy. We have met the enemy, and he is dead. Now, everyone back to work! I want full reports on all exterior and interior defences, and in particular why most of them didn’t bloody work.”

  The weapons di
sappeared, and the lab assistants went back to shouting at each other and bullying their computers. Some were clearly exhausted from fighting, while others were still yawning from being dragged from their beds. All of them were giving everything they had to the problem of why so many of our defences had failed us in our hour of need. The Armourer moved quickly among them, peering over shoulders and asking pertinent questions, like why had the robot machine guns and the automatic energy weapons been the only systems to kick in? I’d been wondering that myself. There should have been force shields, shaped curses, floating invisible incendiaries, nerve gas clusters and teleport mines . . . The Armourer kept reeling them off, and the answer was always the same. Someone had shut them all down, in advance, inside the Hall. Someone inside the family. No one else had the codes, or access to the security computers. The automatic weaponry had remained on line only because they were controlled by the Armourer’s personal computer.

  I found an empty chair, by stealing it from someone else when they weren’t looking, and sank into it. It felt really good to be off my feet. I was aching in all my muscles and some of my bones. My clothes were soaked with sweat, like I’d run a marathon. The armour provides us with strength and speed, but it’s still all down to the man inside. Someone thrust a cup of hot tea into my hands, and was gone before I could ask for a splash of whisky in it. I burned my mouth on the hot liquid, and blew on it for a while. After all I’d seen and been through, I felt like I could sit there forever.

  The Armourer didn’t look tired. He raged back and forth, striding up and down the length of the Armoury, driving on his assistants, constantly coming up with different approaches and new leads of inquiry. He hurried from post to post, encouraging and remonstrating, his voice flat and harsh, his eyes cold. Just the thought of a traitor in the family had filled him with a terrible fury. He finally came back to stand before me, scowling furiously.