They rode through streets filled with shadows and fog, past the spectral lights of taverns and ghostly figures half-hidden in doorways. They passed beneath the dank and dripping underside of a bridge as a cargo train laden with coal howled over them. They followed the banks of the canal, past barges and narrowboats and scurrying black mischiefs of water rats. They rode on and on into the night, through narrow cobbled streets like ancient canyons, until they came at last to the river and the great black hulk of HMS Hades.
The ship appeared to them through the fog like some monster from an ancient legend, the flickering lights in its smoke-blackened windows like menacing eyes blinking in the gloom.
Gaskell, Emily and Alice slowed their horses to a canter and came to a halt when they were a safe distance from the crumbling wreck. After dismounting they tethered the horses, and made their way very slowly towards the ship.
‘Remember,’ said Emily as they neared its hull, ‘caution at all times. There may be children on board.’
‘And we don’t even know what we’re looking for,’ Gaskell muttered. ‘We might be chasing after the fantasies of a paranoid old fool.’
‘Do you think so?’ said Emily. ‘Well, he was a paranoid old fool someone saw fit to murder and dismember. Captain Harkness is still missing. And then we have the matter of your little altercation this afternoon. . .’
Gaskell stopped in his tracks and turned to face her.
‘Oh, you thought I wouldn’t find out about that?’ said Emily, raising an eyebrow. ‘You forget, Mr Gaskell, that there is a reason I run our operations. Don’t worry. . . You shan’t be reprimanded for your actions. My only question is this. . . If McQuaid and Tice were old friends of yours from your naval days, do you still believe Montague has no involvement in this?’
‘What happened this afternoon proves nothing,’ Gaskell snapped. ‘And we don’t even know what this is. . .’
‘Well,’ said Emily, walking ahead of him, ‘I rather think we’re about to find out.’
Treading carefully, she made her way down the riverbank until she was standing directly below the edge of the Hades’ portside deck. From her satchel she produced a small pistol, in the barrel of which there sat an iron grappling hook. She aimed the gun and fired, the hook silently launching itself up and over the ship’s side at the end of a length of rope. With a forceful tug, Emily pulled the rope tight and began to climb up the side of the ship, Alice following close behind her.
‘You know, we could have tried knocking at the door,’ said Gaskell, shaking his head as he grasped the rope and joined them.
Emily was first onto the deck, with Alice and Gaskell hoisting themselves over the edge only a few seconds later.
‘Yes,’ Emily whispered. ‘But that wouldn’t be as much fun, now, would it?’
Gaskell was about to reply when he saw a shadowy figure emerging from a trapdoor and running very suddenly and silently towards them. He drew his shotgun from its scabbard, worked its pump-action, and fired.
The muzzle flare lit up the deck like a flash of lightning, while the gunshot rumbled and echoed out into the night like thunder. The shadowy figure was hurled backward, hitting the deck with a heavy thud.
Emily and Alice turned to Gaskell, Alice cupping her hand over one ear and wincing.
‘Mr Gaskell!’ cried Emily. ‘I believe I told you to practise caution. . .’
He pushed past them to where the body had fallen. Though the assailant’s face had been virtually destroyed by the blast of the shotgun, it was instantly apparent that he, or it, was not human. The crest of thin flesh on the crown of its head and the spiny fins around its jowls were all too familiar to them.
‘It’s a homoformatus piscis. . .’ said Emily.
Alice and Gaskell looked at her with raised eyebrows.
‘Well,’ said Emily, ‘when either of you can think of a better name for them, I’ll be more than happy to hear it.’
‘But what’s it doing here?’ asked Alice. ‘Guarding this place?’
Gaskell crouched down beside the body. Around its neck it wore a heavy brass collar in the centre of which was an ovoid vial filled with blue liquid.
‘What is that?’ asked Emily.
Without answering her, Gaskell used the stock of his shotgun to shatter the vial. All at once the air was filled with the scent of almonds.
‘Cyanide. . .’ said Gaskell.
Careful not to touch any of the liquid he lifted the collar away from the creature’s throat. Its inside edge was lined with tiny needles, barely visible to the naked eye.
‘It must be some kind of device for controlling them,’ he said.
‘Then there may be others,’ said Emily.
Gaskell looked up at her and nodded.
Leaving the body where it lay, they explored the deck of the Hades, winding their way through the tight maze of walkways between its ramshackle buildings. Eventually they came to a door through which they saw the dim traces of lamplight.
‘Miss Guppy,’ said Emily, pointing to the lock. ‘If you would?’
Alice nodded and set at once about picking the lock with her hairpin. After only a few seconds she heard the satisfying clunk as its bolt slid back, and the door creaked open. Emily nodded to Alice and Gaskell in turn and then led them through the doorway into a barely lit stairwell.
Down and down they walked, treading as silently as they could on steps that creaked and groaned with every footfall, until they came at last to a long wooden corridor lined on one side with flickering oil lamps. As they edged their way along the passage Gaskell drew his shotgun and lifted it up, aiming it squarely at the far end of the corridor.
From somewhere on the other side of a door they could hear the sound of footsteps. They stopped walking, Emily placing her forefinger to her lips.
A moment’s silence, the three of them holding their breath as one and waiting, and then the sound of the door handle being turned. . .
The door opened suddenly and violently with a crash, and another one of the amphibious creatures came running out of the shadows.
Gaskell lifted up his shotgun and took aim but, before he could fire, Alice had drawn and thrown her knife. The blade spun through the air, end over end, until it buried itself in their assailant’s eye. The creature stopped in its tracks and staggered back, clumsily clutching at the knife’s handle in the last, desperate seconds before it fell to the ground and died.
Gaskell breathed out loudly, lowering his shotgun.
‘Do you see, Mr Gaskell?’ said Emily. ‘These things can be done quietly, you know.’
Alice ran to the dead alien and pulled the blade from its eye, wiping it clean on her coat before returning it to her pocket. She was about to stand when a second creature emerged from the doorway, brandishing a cleaver.
Gaskell lifted his shotgun for the second time in as many minutes, his finger curled around the trigger, and took aim.
Suddenly the corridor was filled with the deafening racket of a single gunshot. The creature was hit in the chest and thrown to the ground, where it lay writhing and twitching in the throes of death.
Emily Holroyd blew the gun smoke from the barrel of her pistol and slid it back into its holster.
‘You were saying?’ said Gaskell.
‘They are here,’ said the Widow Blight, standing in the doorway of his study.
Sat behind his desk with a smile that Mrs Blight had not expected, Tiberius Finch clasped his hands together and nodded sagely.
‘Yes they are,’ he said. ‘But they will run out of ammunition soon enough. They are no match for our specimens.’ Rising to his feet, he opened a drawer and lifted out his revolver.
‘Surely you are not considering confronting them yourself?’ asked Mrs Blight.
‘Not at all,’ Finch replied. ‘This is merely a precaution. We must go to our patient at once. Those fools do not know the ship as well as we do. They will quickly find themselves quite lost and outnumbered.’
‘But the
babies. . . What if they find the babies?’
‘Let them,’ Finch replied. ‘We have a more valuable asset now. To the laboratory. . .’
Alice Guppy kicked the creature in its face, sending it reeling backwards, stunned. As it prepared itself for another attack, Charles Gaskell lifted his shotgun and blasted it in the chest. There was not a second’s pause before another one of the creatures came lumbering towards them, its hands reaching out with murderous intent. Emily Holroyd took aim with her revolver, and killed it with a single shot.
They had arrived at a wooden door many levels below the deck of the HMS Hades and had killed almost a dozen of the creatures, but now there was silence.
Alice set about picking the door’s lock, and seconds later they entered a stygian chamber filled with empty cots. Using her flashlight, Emily cast a single prism of yellow light around the bare and desolate room. There were traces of old blood on the floorboards, and in one corner of the room a pile of fabrics.
‘What is it?’ asked Alice.
Emily approached the pile, and crouched to pick up one of the bundles of cloth. It was a child’s blanket. She gasped, dropping it to the ground. Beside the pile of blankets was another mound, this time consisting of nothing but children’s shoes. Dozens and dozens of children’s shoes.
‘Where are the children?’ asked Gaskell. ‘This place is like a nursery, but where are the children?’
Emily didn’t answer him. She rose to her feet and crossed the darkened room to a second door. Placing her ear against the wood, she heard sounds coming from the other side, a strange mewling, like the mournful wailing of cats.
She tried the handle. The door was unlocked, and so she opened it very slowly. Through it there was a second chamber, this one illuminated by thin beams of pale blue moonlight that spilled in through grimy portholes. Like the first room this one was also filled with cots, perhaps fifty of them in all, but these were occupied. As she gazed down into the first cot she came across, Emily saw, wriggling on its back and shackled to the cot’s frame, an alien infant. The creature looked up at her and hissed, gnashing its teeth and clawing helplessly at the air.
‘Dear Lord,’ said Alice, walking past row after row of cots. ‘What are they doing here?’
‘They’re breeding them,’ replied Emily. ‘That first room. . . the nursery. . .’
Alice looked at her. She saw in Emily’s expression something she had never seen before: a palpable horror, laced with an immeasurable sadness. Tears welled in her eyes.
‘What is it?’ asked Alice
‘It wasn’t a nursery,’ replied Emily. ‘It was where they fed.’
‘Who?’
Emily looked down into the cots, at the wailing, shackled creatures that surrounded them, and Alice understood all too well what she meant.
‘Dear God. . .’ she said.
Gaskell stood at the next door, shaking his head, his eyes screwed shut as if he dared not look at the monstrous infants a second longer. When they had composed themselves they moved on, into a narrow stairwell that led further down into the depths of the Hades. They came at last to a dark and dank room with no illumination. Using the flashlight once more, Emily shone its beam across the room and they saw that it was furnished with cylindrical glass tanks.
Each tank was filled with murky water, and suspended in the cloudy liquid the twisted forms of alien foetuses. Some were recognisable as the amphibious creatures that had been shackled in the cots, others were unlike anything they had seen before. In one they saw a pitiful specimen with finned jowls and clawed hands, but what looked all too much like human hair.
Emily could hardly breathe. She felt appalled and nauseous at the same time, the mounting horror of the situation almost too much to bear. Taking a deep breath and letting it out slowly, she moved on, Gaskell and Alice close behind her, into another narrow wooden corridor. At the end of this passage was yet another wooden door in the centre of which was a small window. Through its grubby, warped glass could be seen the flickering yellow glow of lamplight. Emily approached the door as silently as she could, and gazed through it.
On the other side was a room that might once have served as the armoury of HMS Hades, its walls lined with empty gun racks, and in one corner a row of rusting harpoons. Now, it would appear, it served a different purpose. In the centre of the room was a surgeon’s operating table surrounded by numerous scientific apparatus: burners and glass jars filled with mysterious chemicals; a tray filled with surgical instruments.
Standing beside the table, Emily saw the figures of Mrs Blight and Tiberius Finch. They were hunched over a figure who was strapped to the table by his hands and wrists. Only when the Widow Blight moved a little to one side did Emily see that the man strapped to the table was Jack Harkness.
‘They have him,’ she whispered to the others. ‘Captain Harkness. . .’
She leaned closer to the door, tilting her ear toward the window, and listened.
‘It would appear your friends are here to rescue you,’ said Finch with a derisive laugh. ‘They shan’t last very long. Tonight will prove a useful demonstration of our experiment’s worth. Meanwhile, you are our most prized asset, Captain Harkness, and as such we feel it would be wise to move you to another location. Sir Henry will pay very handsomely for a specimen such as yourself.’
Emily turned to Gaskell. It was clear he had heard every word Finch had said. She looked through the window once more.
‘Mrs Blight,’ said Finch, turning to his accomplice. ‘The chloroform, if you please. . .’
‘What are we waiting for?’ hissed Gaskell, pulling Emily out of the way.
‘Mr Gaskell!’ snapped Emily, but it was too late.
With a forceful kick, Gaskell opened the door to Finch’s makeshift laboratory, and charged into the room, working the pump-action of his shotgun as he did so.
Finch spun around, diving out of Gaskell’s aim as the thunderous blast of the shotgun punched a hole through the wooden wall behind him. He drew his pistol, and, hitting the deck with a thud, he fired a single shot which slammed into Gaskell’s chest, throwing him back into the darkness of the corridor.
Gathering himself as quickly as he could, Finch got to his feet and fired another shot through the doorway, before fleeing for a second door. He turned and fired a third time before he disappeared into the shadows.
Cursing under her breath, Mrs Blight set about dousing a cloth with chloroform but, before she could place it over Jack’s mouth, she was joined by Emily, Alice and Gaskell.
‘You were shot! I saw it!’ she hissed at Gaskell. She pointed down at Jack. ‘You’re. . . you’re like him!’
Gaskell shook his head, tapping his chest with his fist. It sounded as if his ribs were made of wood.
‘The benefits of a bullet-proof vest,’ he said with a confident grin. He turned to Jack. ‘You all right?’
‘Oh yeah,’ said Jack. ‘I’m great. A little tied up at the moment, but that’s not always a bad thing. . .’
Emily turned to Gaskell. ‘Find Finch,’ she said. ‘Don’t let him leave the ship.’
Gaskell nodded, running from the room with his shotgun at his side, and then Alice and Emily turned to the Widow Blight.
‘Mrs Blight,’ said Emily. ‘In the name of Her Majesty, Queen Victoria, I—’
Mrs Blight hit her in the face with a brutal left hook.
Shocked and dazed, Emily fell back against the operating table, stemming the flow of blood from her nose with the back of her hand.
Alice looked from Emily to the Widow Blight and shook her head. ‘Oh, you have just made one very big mistake,’ she said, edging her way toward Mrs Blight, her fists raised.
Having gathered her wits, Emily began undoing the straps that held Jack Harkness to the table. ‘Sorry if I’m ruining your fun, Captain Harkness,’ she said.
‘Not at all, Miss Holroyd,’ replied Jack with a wink.
Alice and the Widow Blight were now in one corner of the laboratory,
the latter trapped between the operating table and the far wall. Mrs Blight looked around the room as if searching for some means of escape, and then, with a monstrous howl, she launched herself at Alice, her bony hands reaching for the younger woman’s throat. Clawing at her with jagged fingernails, Mrs Blight knocked Alice to the ground and together they fought on the floor of the laboratory, hitting shelves and racks filled with instruments. Glass jars and vials tumbled to the ground, where they shattered, their liquid contents splashing onto rough wood, and still the two women fought.
Alice pushed the older woman away from her and stood. For a moment they faced one another from either side of the room, before coming together once more, punching and slapping one another with brutal force.
As Emily freed Jack from the table, and helped him to his feet, the Widow Blight grabbed Alice by the throat and pushed her down onto the operating table. Emily turned to them and drew her gun, but before she could fire a single shot Alice had lifted up her legs and kicked Mrs Blight in the stomach with all her strength.
The older woman reeled, wheezing and spluttering and doubled over in pain. The soles of her shoes crunched against broken glass and then all at once she lost her footing on the slippery surface and was sent staggering back toward the row of harpoons, her arms flailing wildly and her eyes wide with panic. A rusty spike erupted from her chest with a sickening squelch, and she stared down at the blade in horror, a thin stream of blood trickling from the corner of her mouth. Desperately she gasped for air, once, twice.
The third gasp was her last.
After a moment’s silence, they heard footsteps. The door swung open with a crash, and Gaskell ran into the room. Seeing Mrs Blight’s corpse, he grimaced before turning to Jack, Emily and Alice.
‘I’ve lost Finch,’ he said. ‘This place is a labyrinth.’
‘Then we need to get off the ship,’ said Emily. ‘He may have escaped.’
Together they ran from the laboratory, back through the network of corridors and stairwells until they came to the gloomy nursery where alien children gurgled in their cots. As Emily and Alice carried on running, Jack set about breaking the bars of the cots and releasing them from their shackles.
Consequences Page 4