Yes. That was it.
“Sands! Sands, look—the drain!”
Sands looked. He watched as Ahmer bent over the drain and laced his fingers through the grate and lifted.
“It’s not even bolted!”
Ahmer tugged at it. It was heavy as a manhole cover, held in place only by its own weight.
In an instant, Sands was there, and together they lifted the drain cover away and eased it to the deck with a dull clang. Sands peered inside, but all he could see was darkness.
“Where does it go?”
“It’s a—” Ahmer consulted his tablet and hesitated over the strange word. “A bil-jah drain…”
“Bilge,” Sands said. “A bilge drain.”
“Yes. The bilge compartment runs under this whole deck. There’s another drain in the Engine Room.”
“Got it.”
Sands dropped down, trying to squeeze through, but he couldn’t get past his knees. He tried both legs, then one at time, and even seemed ready to plunge through head first, but the opening was just too small.
After watching several fruitless contortions, Ahmer tapped Sands on the shoulder.
“I can do it.”
He scooted forward, dropped his legs through with room to spare. Sands gripped his shoulder.
“You’re going nowhere without me.”
“No time to argue. It’s not far. I can do it.”
Sands realized it was pointless to say anything more.
Ahmer handed Sands his tablet. “Take good care of that.”
Sands nodded.
Ahmer shimmied his hips through and sank down to his armpits. Sands took him by the hand, pumped it once for good luck. Ahmer flushed, looking sheepish.
“All those years going hungry in Pakistan,” he said. “They finally pay off.”
Sands blinked at him. “Did you just crack wise?”
Ahmer answered with a weak smile and lowered himself down.
There was a yelp, a splash, and what sounded to Sands’ ears like cursing in Urdu. He couldn’t see anything.
“Ahmer, are you okay?”
Ahmer’s torch came on and waved back and forth. “Okay. See you on the other side.”
“The other side, Brother. Be careful.”
Ahmer wasn’t sure at first he had heard right. “Brother” was what Sands called Catfish. It was what he called Angel and Wolf before they were killed. It was a word for brave soldiers. His heart danced in his chest. He wanted to shout for joy. But he thought perhaps this wasn’t the appropriate time.
He moved forward, slogging through rancid, oily water that was knee deep. The bilge compartment was shallow, no more than six or seven feet in depth, but it was as wide and as long as the ship’s hull, the expanse broken only with the steel buttresses that formed the ship’s skeleton. The place was alive with rats. They scuttled up and down the walls through the roving beam of Ahmer’s flash. He kept it moving, in hopes of warding off any creatures that might venture too close. Except for his feeble beam, he could make out nothing but endless darkness. Only by keeping his movement perpendicular to the buttresses could he be sure he was moving in the right direction. He stumbled repeatedly, going to his knees several times, the turgid bilge sloshing up to his waist. Behind him a low, rhythmic moaning—perhaps an animal, perhaps the straining joints of the ship—kept him moving forward.
In the Engine Room, the noise of Sands’ gunfire had attracted Cerberus to the other side of the hatch. Six separate nostrils sniffed at the seal, but it found nothing but the familiar scent of its master, where he had passed through a short time before. Limping slightly from a wound on one of its forelegs, Cerberus moved to the bilge drain. One mastiff head sniffed as the other two heads cocked their ears to listen. Nothing there. The creature moved on, continuing its watchful rounds.
-20-
We must do the things we think we cannot do.
—Eleanor Roosevelt
Oleg, alone in the Vestibule, sat at his console, brooding over an on-screen document with the heading “EMERGENCY PROTOCOLS.” It was a sobering document that detailed many catastrophic scenarios, but thematically speaking, it all seemed to boil down to this: “Officers and VIPs first, save whatever part of the crew you can, let the inmates go down with the ship.” He learned at least that the self-destruct mechanism in the Inferno’s bowels was not just some jerry-rigged improvisation, but that it was a design feature of every black raft. There had to be some protocol for disengaging it, he thought. Or at least, some clue how he might escape it.
His screen glitched and went staticky. He tried to scroll to the next page of the document, but the screen glitched again. He cursed and slapped the console on the side, a technique that never seemed to work but always made him feel better. The screen went to complete snow. He cursed again, and was about to give it a good whack, when he noticed that there was something moving in the snow. An image, like the outline of a head. The outline clarified, and a face emerged. It was Einstein.
Oleg glanced around, as if to check whether anyone else had seen it. But the old man was asleep and the others were all away on their silly mission of mercy to feed the Dregs. He peered at Einstein’s face with fascination. The strange-looking man fiddled, off-camera, at some controls, seemingly unaware that anyone might be watching him.
The glitchiness subsided, and Einstein leaned forward, looking Oleg almost directly in the eye. Oleg checked the black electrical tape over his monitor’s camera. It was still secure. Instead of looking at what was probably a blank screen, Einstein was looking into his own terminal’s camera, giving the illusion of eye contact. He began to speak, his voice coming in over Oleg’s speakers at a low, conspiratorial pitch.
“This is Dr. Garrick Henderson calling the operator of Terminal One in the Vestibule. Do you read?”
Oleg sputtered into his microphone, “Y-yes.”
“This is Dr. Garrick Henderson—”
Oleg realized his microphone was unplugged. He jacked it in.
“Yes, this is Terminal One,” he said.
“Good. Please remove the obstruction from your terminal camera.”
Oleg peeled away the tape. Einstein smiled.
“That’s better.” Einstein consulted a clipboard. “Is this Technical Operator IN-47632, Oleg Kral?”
“Yes.”
“Are you alone?”
“Yes. Everyone else is below decks.”
Einstein grunted. “Thank you for that bit of information. Since your friends destroyed my laboratory’s surveillance system I am all but blind.” Einstein detected something in Oleg’s expression. “They are your friends?”
“They’re no friends of mine.”
“I see. Well, Oleg—may I call you Oleg? The reason I’m calling is that this ship is about to self-destruct in…” He checked his watch. “Eighteen minutes. I’m in the Warden’s escape pod—”
Oleg had a question, but Einstein cut him off. “I know—it’s a secret. Just like the chute from his quarters to the pod is a secret. Except now you know the secret, too. Any-hoo, it appears the Warden was concerned someone, say, in an emergency situation, might steal his pod out from under him, and so he’s hidden its command module. Without which, I’m sure you can guess, the pod will not go.”
Einstein adjusted his camera to show an angle on the pod’s control panel. There was an empty slot. “It fits here. It would be about the size of a pack of cards.” The camera shifted back to Einstein’s face. “Without that module, I’m stuck. And the Warden’s escape chute isn’t a two-way conveyance. One may ride it down, but one may not ride it back up. So you see, I can’t retrieve the module myself.”
“I could get it for you.”
“You read my mind. You’ll find the module in the Warden’s quarters. If you can bring it to me within—” He checked his watch again. “Sixteen-and-a-half minutes, well—the pod will easily accommodate two.”
Before Oleg could answer, Bao and Desmond burst in, brushing the last of the v
egetable debris from their clothes. On Oleg’s screen, Einstein blinked out.
“Man, it’s crazy!” Bao was saying. “Hey, Oleg, I think those freaks on Limbo Deck are addicted to Process.”
Oleg discreetly placed the tape back over his terminal camera.
“I’m sure they would have killed us had they gotten the opportunity,” Desmond added. “They wanted no part of fruits and vegetables.”
“Maybe you should try them with meat,” Oleg offered.
“Sure, I bet if we fried up some bacon they’d change their tune.”
Oleg’s console speaker crackled to life.
“Oleg, this is Sands, come in.”
Instead of answering, Oleg jumped to his feet. “You guys take over. I’ve got to hit the head.” Before they could respond, he was gone.
To Desmond’s questioning look Bao responded, “Too much dairy.”
The speaker crackled again. “Oleg, this is Sands, do you read me?”
Bao sat at the console. “Sands, this is Bao, come in.”
“Any word from Catfish on those reinforcements?”
“Last I heard, he’s got a half-dozen men. They’re in the magazine now, getting equipped.”
“Okay, get him on the horn and tell him to bring some C-4 to the Engine Room. Anything he can find that blows up.”
“Roger.”
“Sands out.”
***
Victoria and Lani exited the Lust Deck prison block, their trays empty but their spirits full of good feeling. Lani, especially, was bubbling over with the emotional connections she had made with the women. She had never been to Lust Deck—or any of the prison decks—before, and it was the most women she had seen all at once in over a year.
“It’s going to be so amazing when we can open the cells and let everybody out.”
“It’ll be amazing all right,” Victoria agreed, but she was thinking there were plenty of Inferno inmates that were better left in their cells.
They came to a T-junction in the passageway. “Which way?”
Lani checked her tablet. She pointed at the bulkhead straight ahead, where there was a half-open hatch. “That looks like a shortcut.”
“What is it?”
Lani read off the schematic. “Physical plant. Ventilation, plumbing, that kind of stuff. It goes straight to the mezzanine.”
“Okay.”
Victoria went first, pushing the hatch wide. The compartment looked something like a utility room, with tools and equipment stowed on one wall. The rest was a webwork of pipes, ducting, and conduit. The center of this tangle was a clear path, and although the space was dimly lit, Victoria could make out what looked like an ell turn not far ahead.
“Are you sure about this?”
Lani stepped through the hatch, her eyes on her tablet. “I think so. According to this, it should be a straight shot.”
Victoria bent to take a look. The shattering clang of the hatch slamming shut behind them caused both women to gasp in fright. Their trays clattered to the deck. If Lani’s tablet hadn’t been secured by a strap to her hip, she would have dropped it, too.
Standing at the hatch was a leering, bearded hulk. With one hand he spun the wheel-lock secure. In the other he swung a heavy chain, the end tangled into a ball to form a sort of mace.
“Well whatta ya know. Here I am going to Lust Deck, and it looks like Lust Deck has come to me.”
The hulk looked to be more beast than man. His beard was short, but thick and wiry as steel wool, and all of a piece with the hair on his head. The bristles grew so high on his cheeks as to almost form a mask. They carpeted his neck and peeked out in tufts from the holes in his filthy smock. What was visible of his face was pockmarked and red, like many of the Psychs, but his eyes were frighteningly sane. He smiled with blackened teeth and loomed toward them, jangling the ball at the end of his chain.
As one, the women picked up their trays, flung them at him, and ran. He batted the trays away with a sweep of one forearm and hurled his mace with the other. The chain caught Lani in the legs, the ball whipping around and thudding in the small of her back. She hit the deck hard.
Victoria skidded to a halt at Lani’s cry. She stooped and grabbed her under one arm to pull her up, but Lani’s legs were tangled in the chain. Before she could kick it away, the hulk had her by the ankle. Lani looked Victoria in the eye and gritted out one word: “Run!”
Victoria released Lani’ arm, but instead of running she tried to make a play for a pry-bar on the wall. The hulk yanked the chain from Lani’s legs, causing her to cry out in pain as the heavy iron links raked across her bones. Victoria pulled at the pry-bar, but like all things onboard a ship, it was secured. A second tug pulled it away, but the hulk swung the ball of his chain down on the bar with such force that it rattled Victoria’s teeth. If it had hit her, it would have broken her arm.
She ran. The hulk whipped the chain in an arc around his head and let it fly, but Lani spoiled his aim with a kick to his knee. It jarred her as if she had kicked a lamppost. The lamppost growled and kicked back.
Victoria quickly found that the “ell” she thought she had seen was a dead end. A series of widely spaced pipes confronted her like the bars of a cell. Instead of a passageway, they had stumbled into a closed compartment. Surprised to find the pry-bar still in her hand, she banged it against the pipes, but even if she could have bent or broken them, it would have been to no purpose. Beyond the pipes was nothing but bare wall. She looked up. A single, dimly burning bulb stared down at her. She swung the pry-bar at it, plunging the area into darkness.
The hulk followed after her, holding Lani by one foot, her body slung over his shoulder like a rucksack. She tried her best to kick him in the head, but he only batted her foot away as if it were a pesky fly. “Whatsa matter, Red? Don’t you wanna party?”
Coming to the dead end, he dropped Lani like a sack of potatoes and pinned her with one foot on her neck. Every time she struggled, he only had to shift his weight to make her still. He cast about to see where Victoria could be hiding, but she was invisible in the shadows.
“I’m giving you ten seconds to come out, Red, or things might get ugly.” He looked down at Lani, her face red with the pressure he was applying. “You know, I don’t get too hung up on a woman’s looks. Or if she’s breathin’.”
Squeezing between the narrow space between the pipes and the bulkhead, Victoria cursed herself for having agreed to Lani’s suggestion they leave their heavy weapons behind. They had been on a mission of mercy and they didn’t want to spook the vulnerable women of Lust Deck with assault rifles. Idiot! And where was her pistol? She felt for her holster, but it was empty. The gun must have been knocked loose in the scuffle. All she could do now was maneuver to outflank her adversary and hope to gain an advantage. If she moved carefully, the hum of machinery was enough to cover the sound of her movements. It was slow going, but already she was parallel to his shoulder.
“Come on out and play, Red. I’m plenty of man for two.”
“You stay right where you are, Victoria!”
The hulk lifted his foot and jabbed Lani in the temple with his heel, bouncing her head off the deck.
“See? We’re havin’ fun already!”
Victoria spotted a way to climb up to the ductwork overhead. She called out, “Lani, are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” Lani grunted, her face pressed again to the deck by the hulk’s foot. Her voice betrayed more anger than fear.
The hulk spun to follow the sound of Victoria’s voice, but she had already ducked behind a panel, where she was able to move more freely. She clambered up the pipes to the ceiling.
The hulk pulled Lani up by the hair and circled one arm around her neck. With one forearm hooked under her chin, he held her with her legs dangling. She kicked and punched at him, but it was like hitting a refrigerator. Rattling his chain across the deck, the hulk made his way to where he thought Victoria was hiding. As he moved forward, Victoria, from her perch
overhead, maneuvered around to his blind side.
Displaying Lani like an oversized doll, he scraped the steel brush of his beard against her cheek.
“She’s a cute little thing, ain’t she? How’d you think she’d look with her head on backwards?”
He tightened his arm around her neck. Lani’s small hands pulled and scratched. Her legs kicked.
Victoria was directly above them now.
Lani had gone limp. The hulk eased his grip and slapped her cheek.
“Wakey-wakey. You don’t wanna miss the fun.”
Lani struggled back to consciousness, her fingers squeezing in between her neck and her attacker’s arm, desperate to make any space for breath she could get.
The hulk shouted into the darkness. “You wanna watch, is that it? You kinky bitch. Okay, watch this.”
He looped his chain around Lani’s neck. Lani grimaced in pain.
“What ya wanna bet I can pop her head like a pimple?”
Victoria leapt from her perch, bringing the pry-bar down on his head with a bone-splitting crack.
The hulk fell onto his back, both hands gripping his bleeding head. Victoria pounced on him, shoving the pry-bar into his throat, pressing it down on one end with both hands, on the other with her knee.
The hulk gagged, his hairy face gone purple. He grabbed the pry-bar, and Victoria could feel his tremendous strength. But before he could throw her off, Lani had picked up his mace, and swinging with all she had, brought the ball of chain squarely into his groin. The hulk let out a strangled squeak from somewhere deep in his throat. Lani hit him again and again, until his pants colored with blood.
The hulk squirmed and rocked, but the fight had gone out of him. Victoria sat on his chest, one knee on each shoulder. “What’s the matter, big boy? Can’t get it up when the woman’s on top?”
Inferno 2033 Book Two: Perdition Page 13