by Rob May
The tunnels carved into the rock were dry and warm. Hot pipes ran overhead, while clean marble tiles paved the floor. The walls had been painted a sterile white. It was unfussy and practical. Kal was impressed, and more than a little fearful: an ordered, careful enemy was one that had few weaknesses she could exploit. She would much rather face a chaotic madman than someone like Sirensbane, who had harnessed and disciplined his evil nature and built an empire.
At a T-junction, Kal noticed the zombies passing by in both directions along the top of the T, while the third passage—the one that led to the large centre dome—was clear. ‘Sirensbane is that way,’ she said.
Lula nodded, but didn’t speak. Kal could see the fear hidden behind her brave face.
‘I’ll confront him alone,’ Kal said. ‘It’s better that way. You go and find a way to get the zombies out of here while they’re still docile. If I can take him out before he realises we’re here, I’ll come back and help you. If things go wrong, save as many as you can and get out of here. Don’t come for me.’
Lula took Kal’s hand. ‘Be careful,’ she said.
It looked like she wanted to say more, but the moment passed. They didn’t have the time for an emotional heart to heart. Kal briefly gripped Lula’s wrist, and then turned and hurried down the empty passage.
Like a moray eel in a deep cave, the enemy lurked in the heart of its lair. The place where, Kal hoped, its defences would be lowered and it would be least prepared for an attack.
* * *
The first set of metal doors that Kal arrived at were marked with a sign: NO WORKERS. Kal guessed that was Sirensbane’s name for his zombies, but could they even read? Under the words, however, was a symbol: a human figure with a cross over it. When Kal slid open the door, she nearly stumbled. For the benefit of zombies that couldn’t comprehend the picture, there was a cattle grid on the floor.
Kal closed the door quietly behind her. A second door in front of her opened by itself and she continued in search of her quarry. It wasn’t the first time Kal had set herself on a course to kill someone, but it was the first time she had done so with the intention of taking her target out in cold blood if possible. To kill an evil villain while he posed no immediate threat to anyone—was that a kind of murder? Kal would let others debate the philosophy. All she knew was that if you could kill someone without emotion getting in the way, and it still felt like the right thing to do, then how could it possibly be wrong? To try to capture Sirensbane alive would be a big risk, considering his propensity for trickery. No, her mind was set: he had to die. Her injured leg throbbed dully as her adrenaline flowed, and her heart pumped blood faster around her body.
Still, a small part of Kal hoped that he would at least put up some kind of spirited defence, and not make it too easy for her.
She arrived at another double-door airlock, and this time emerged into a vast cavern with a low ceiling. She guessed that she was directly under the largest of the domes. There were barrels of napazane stored here, as well as lots of dusty metal equipment half-covered with sheets. Thick pipes radiating heat rose up from below. Were the domes built upon some kind of natural source of power, she wondered. An underground hydrothermal vent, perhaps? Kal wiped aside the dust from a large cylindrical vat; the metal was chrome-plated or maybe even pure chrometal, and she could see her own reflection as clear as in a mirror. What a mess, she thought, examining her cut and bruised face and running a hand through her tangled and matted hair.
In the centre of the cavern, a metal spiral stair rose up through a hole in the roof. Kal took some deep breaths to steady her nerves, and then stepped slowly and quietly up into the dome above.
The staircase rose above the floor of the dome, allowing access to a multi-level scaffold constructed out of steel girders. Each level was crammed with row upon row of laboratory apparatus: polished chrometal tanks, complex arrays of glass piping and bubbling vats. Everything was tidy, ordered and spotless. There appeared to be nobody around, and Kal was able to creep up to the top level, which itself reached less than half the height of the dome. The space was enormous; so big that Kal could see clouds of vapour forming in the vast emptiness overhead. Lights like hundreds of tiny suns covered the inside of the framework, and gave the lab a stark, flat light, under which there were no dark corners to hide in. Kal was on high alert—if Sirensbane was in here, they could spot each other at any moment.
And suddenly there he was! He was walking along the floor of the dome, right below Kal’s level. It took a moment for her to recognise him; Corus Sirensbane was not wearing his usual robes and sinister make-up. He was clad in a simple white shirt, black trousers and boots. His head showed a smattering of grey stubble. He looked like a normal middle-aged man strolling calmly about his workshop.
Sirensbane was passing from machine to machine, noting down readings in a book. Kal stalked his movements from above, taking stairs and ladders down whenever she got the chance. When she was fifteen feet up from him, on a gantry immediately overhead, she made her move: jumping and falling straight down, her sword aimed at the base of his neck.
And then the Magician pulled his next trick.
He nimbly hopped to one side as Kal fell to the ground. She landed easily, like a cat, but in the moment before she could rise, Sirensbane lashed out with a powerful kick, sending Kal sprawling against one of the metal vats. Her body banged against it hard and she dropped her sword. She didn’t have time to raise it before Sirensbane was on her again, his forearms bashing her arms away from her body, his knee coming up into her stomach, driving the wind out of her. She felt a sharp pain across the bridge of her nose, panicked, and hurled herself down onto the hard rock floor to escape the onslaught.
Kal fought to suck in air. A puddle of blood was forming on the floor under her face. She raised her head; Sirensbane had backed off, and had walked over to a solid stone table in an open space clear of lab equipment. He put down his knife, picked up a glass decanter and poured himself a drink. Then he stood looking out to sea, his back to Kal in a supreme gesture of invincibility.
‘I am disappointed,’ he said. ‘Disappointed in myself for not anticipating that you would dare come here, Kalina Moonheart. I would have thought winning over six thousand doubloons from me, together with your lucky escape when we met at the fort, would have been enough to make you quit while you were ahead. Still, I have learned to expect the unexpected. I trained in wushu with the renowned soldier-monks in the Empire of the Moon. My own body is now primed to protect me on instinct, even when my foresight fails me.’
‘Well, good for you,’ Kal said, wiping blood from her face. The gash was deep; her face would be permanently disfigured. ‘You’re finished anyway, Sirensbane. Your fleet has been destroyed; your hidey-hole here will be sunk by the Republic before dawn.’
Sirensbane brushed off the news. ‘I promised to pay the pirates a handsome price … if they won the battle. Their defeat only saves me money. I imagine I will have to move my base now, but so be it. My empire begins and ends with me; so long as I live I can bring new workers, fighters and smugglers to my aid. That is my power: control over people.’
He turned and poured a second glass from the decanter. ‘Here, Kalina. Pull yourself together and have a drink. This new bissy nut and cocaine beverage is quite refreshing. We will sit and drink and negotiate the terms of your survival.’
Kal stood up slowly, picked up her cutlass and limped to the table. She took the glass … and then threw the contents in Sirensbane’s face. ‘There’s not going to be any negotiating! I’m here to kill you!’
Sirensbane didn’t even flinch as the liquid splashed his face. He licked his lips as it trickled past his nose. His tongue was long and pointed. ‘And yet here I am,’ he said. ‘Still alive. I suggest you listen very carefully to my offer.’
His offer? Was he still intent on her running part of his operation, as he had first suggested when they had played cosmic race together? How could he dare risk even talking t
o her when her murderous intentions were clear. Perhaps he was not so confident of his wushu skills after all. Kal raised her sword and stepped towards him …
Then a familiar sweet wave sloshed through her brain, and she stumbled. Sirensbane stood still, a smile on his lips. Kal looked to the knife on the table: it gleamed with a sticky residue. She realised now what his game was: the knife was laced with his drug, and Kal would now have to fight to stay in control of her own will.
‘Sit down,’ he commanded, gesturing to a seat. Kal could feel vigour and strength surging through her body—she could easily have overpowered him there and then—yet Sirensbane’s orders brooked no resistance. She sat down. Like the table, the seats had been carved out of the rock of the floor of the dome. If Sirensbane floated his domes away, the seats and table would remain here until the end of time, as furniture for fishes and octopuses. Kal tried to concentrate on that image, rather than give in to the drug completely, and she involuntarily smiled. Sirensbane returned the smile, although his was cold. He poured them both a new drink.
‘We are the same, you and I,’ he began.
Kal’s anger surged inside her. If he was trying to win her round, then this was an opening salvo that misfired. ‘We are not the same!’ she snarled. ‘You are a monster. You’ve enslaved thousands. You killed your own son! You—’
‘Do you have parents, Kal?’ Sirensbane asked her.
‘What? No. They were killed years ago.’
‘Your parents failed you, then,’ Sirensbane stated, as if it were an incontrovertible fact. ‘Like my son failed me. I tried to keep Che close, to protect him from those who would kill him out of superstition or fear, but he wanted his freedom. He took that freedom, and he took my money too. He had already taken my wife from me—she died giving birth to him.’
‘Are you seriously trying to blame all this’—Kal gestured around the dome—‘on Che?’
‘No, of course not,’ Sirensbane said. ‘I make no excuse for my actions. You will get no hard luck story from me. Just honesty—the kind you won’t get from your politician friends. What I am saying is, that when you are truly alone in the world, with no family or friends, then you learn to work for no one but yourself. Nothing else matters. You don’t let other people stop you—their only aim is to get what you want, anyway. You don’t let laws stop you, either—they only serve other people, whose only aim is to get what you want.
‘That is where we are alike, Kalina Moonheart. Twenty years ago, I was like you, working for the then-governor of Port Black, carrying out assignments of dubious moral standing. Watching and learning how the system works. In twenty years time, you could be like me. Tragedy will break you quickly; the world will grind you down slowly; a combination of both will soon change your perspective on life … and one day you will have to decide: will you get dragged under the waves and sink, or rise up and swim.’
Kal squeezed her eyes shut to try to keep Sirensbane’s sinuous words out of her skull. ‘You want me to swim with you … to join your shady empire, is that it? But how can I work for you after all you’ve done? You are evil … pure evil.’
Sirensbane gave her patient smile. ‘Evil is just a label, a judgement passed on us by other people. But in my world, there is no judgement. We can be free of all that. I told you before, Kal—I am a libertarian. Everything is permitted; nothing ever is taboo. Good and evil are as little significance as the black and white clothes we both wear; as little significance as my black skin and your white skin.’
Kal shook her head, but it only made her dizzy and even more nauseous. What was he talking about? It was clearly nonsensical bullshit … and yet the words were loaded with a vague promise …
‘But whatever you think of me, Kal,’ he continued, ‘I’m asking you to work with me, not for me. Do you think bar owners care about the right or wrong-doings of the people they work with, their patrons? What about a gambler like yourself? Your clients, the degenerates you sit down with at the card tables. Do you judge them? Of course not, yet you take their money—you take their business. Working with me, Kal, would not compromise your values.’
Kal’s mind couldn’t find the words to debunk Sirensbane’s sweet talk. She was hardly an eloquent speaker at the best of times, let alone with a head full of chemicals. Sirensbane’s arguments were tailored especially for her. She felt the truth in his words. ‘I …’ she began.
He sensed her hesitation, and pressed his point home. ‘My empire is large and expanding, Kal. I deal with legal goods too, and you can help me branch out there if you want. When you control the seas, every country in the world is there to be exploited and sold to. Do they not say that whoever commands the trade of the world commands the riches of the world? Not only that, you are not answerable to kings or queens, senators or generals. Benedict Godsword and his ilk will never find you again, let alone rope you into their affairs. You can be your own master, of your own boundless domain.’
He gestured out of the glass dome to the infinite darkness beyond. ‘Rule the sea, Kal, and live free!’
This time Kal didn’t hesitate. She had made her choice before he had stopped speaking.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Count me in.’
V.v
Lula Pearl’s Last Stand
Lula lost herself amongst the crowds of zombies. Unwashed and sporting torn and blood-stained threads, she could have passed for a zombie herself; she needed only affect a shambling gait and Sirensbane himself wouldn’t have given her a second glance if he went by. Here, under the sea and in the middle of the enemy’s base of operations, Lula felt at one with her people again. So while Kal went after the cause of their affliction, it was Lula’s job to deal with the symptoms, and somehow rescue the Islanders from this watery hell.
Right this very moment, Kal would be face to face with Sirensbane. Lula was still amazed that her friend had come this far, and was taking on possibly her most dangerous ever enemy, and with no promise of a reward. It was true that Lula had never offered Kal anything except the thrill of adventure, and whatever opportunities came with it, but she had never imagined in a thousand years that Kal would happily shrug off the sinking of a boatload of treasure … and still risk her life taking on Sirensbane. Was she really doing it all for Lula, or for herself?
The passageway Lula was following opened out into a long, low hall. Zombies were loading barrels of napazane onto conveyor belts that carried the barrels up and away through hatches in the rockface. Crates of drugs appeared from other hatches, while several new tunnels exited in all directions. It appeared to be some kind of busy distribution centre. Lula found a raised gangway where she could observe the activity for a few moments. She was looking, of course, for her father, but he was nowhere to be seen.
A slight breeze tickled the back of her neck, and she caught a taste of fresh air. It appeared to be coming from a perforated pipe that ran above the gangway and disappeared down one of the other tunnels. Out of curiosity, and with no better options, Lula followed it.
She found herself under another of the domes. But this one wasn’t home to some sterile, functional loading bay or packing plant. Instead, it housed one of the most jaw-dropping sights Lula had ever laid eyes on. This dome was an underwater greenhouse. It was as big as the arboretum in Amaranthium’s Autumn Gardens, but filled with lusher, greener plants that pressed at the glass walls of the dome and tickled the roof with their extremities. The phosphorescent lights were bright overhead, and the heat trapped inside was incredible.
Lula recognised several of the species here: butterfly palms and money plants, bamboo stalks and rubber trees. They were dense with green leaves, and Lula realised then what their purpose was: to provide oxygen for the domes. It was an ingenious solution to the problem of living under the waves, but Lula wasn’t as impressed as she imagined Kal might have been. A jungle torn from the sun wasn’t a jungle at all; it was just a sad shadow of true natural beauty.
She did a circuit of the several paths that led through th
e trees. There were a handful of zombies milling around, pruning the plants and wheeling barrows of fertiliser about. At the very centre of the dome there was a small pond. A few coconuts from the overhanging palms floated in the pool; Lula bent and picked one out.
She tried to think. If she tied coconuts to the zombies’ arms and legs, and shoved them out an airlock, they’d probably float to the surface pretty quickly.
She laughed to herself. Even if she could find enough nuts, what a game that would be, organising a line of a hundred zombies and fitting them with their flotation devices.
A rustling noise behind her made her jump, and she whirled around, nut held high ready to throw. But it was only a zombie dragging a net of fallen leaves past. She watched it shuffle out of sight. Lula thought it was someone she recognised. A fisherman she used to see around Port Black, perhaps?
What did it matter? In truth there was only one zombie she really wanted to save: her father. But why was that? She barely knew him, after all; she had maybe visited him four times in the ten years since she had left home.
Lula knew why. Guilt; she had run away, and now her father and her people were suffering. It wasn’t her fault, of course, but the guilt came from having spent a decade enjoying herself and getting up to no good, when she could have been doing something far more worthwhile; like helping her father and the other villagers stand up to Republic rule, for a start, let alone being there to resist the storm of terror that Sirensbane had whipped up.
When this was all over, her father safe and Sirensbane dead, perhaps she would take up the offer of being the new governor. And maybe Kal would like to stay with her; they could rebuild the governor’s mansion together, and live in luxury ….
She shook off her daydreams. She had work to do first.
* * *