Border Princes t-2

by Dan Abnett

  She noted that James let the ‘at home’ slide. ‘Really?’ he said.

  ‘I just don’t do it any more.’

  ‘He’d get some funny ideas, would he?’

  She shrugged. ‘I think it was the worry that he wouldn’t get any funny ideas.’

  James nodded. ‘Coming back to bed, then?’

  They curled up together in the dark. Raindrops drummed against the window.

  ‘It’s all right me being here, isn’t it?’ she asked.

  ‘What do you think?’

  ‘I didn’t mean like that. I’m imposing. Taking up residence.’

  ‘It’s fine. I like it.’

  They were silent.

  ‘It’s only fair you speak to him,’ James said. ‘When you’ve got your head straight, I mean.’

  ‘I know. I will. The next day or two. I hate lying. I hate the lies more than anything. I’ll have to go back, face the music.’

  She paused.

  ‘And maybe pick up a few things.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘I dunno. All my stuff?’

  He pulled her closer.

  The artillery barrage was creeping closer, great white flower-blooms in the night, more pressure-slap than noise, the booming too loud to actually be heard. The world shook and rattled. Muddy vapour stung his nose, terror clawed like a cat in his chest, trying to get out.

  Davey Morgan woke up. It was black, black like the Black Out. The luminous hands of his little wind-up alarm clock formed a tiny, green fuzz. He groped around and found his specs, put them on his face. Four o’clock gone.

  The noise that had woken him, the noise that had penetrated his dream and whisked him back to ’44, was just the storm. Pelting rain, and a juddering gale. Something was banging and knocking, persistently.

  Cold to the bone, Davey swung slowly out from under the eiderdown and put his feet on the balding carpet. He found his slippers and his dressing gown. His knee hurt when he put his weight onto it.

  The banging was close by. Like a door or a gate, tugged by the wind. Or maybe like some yobbo bastard thumping on his backdoor. Some yobbo bastard who’d been beering it up and fancied some fun and games at Taff Morgan’s expense.

  This late? In this weather? It seemed unlikely, but the trepidation wouldn’t let go of him. Davey could still remember the dream, the terror of the dream. Fresh and real. Funny, it had been years and years since he’d dreamt about service life, years and years since he’d packed the raw memories of beachheads and the bocage up in some mental drawer and slid it tight shut.

  What had opened that up again, after all this bloody time?

  He followed the sound of the banging onto the landing. Shadows waved and jumped in the gloom: the wind waving tree branches in front of the street light outside.

  He limped down the narrow stairs. More banging, sporadic.

  ‘It’s all right,’ he reassured the picture on the hall table.

  He entered the kitchen. So much rain streamed down the windows, the glass looked like it was melting. Bang! Bang-bang!

  ‘Who is it?’ he called. ‘Who’s there?’

  Bang! Bang! Bang-bang!

  Davey took a step towards the backdoor.

  The door and windows blew in at him in a blizzard of glass and fire. Pots flew off the stove. Mugs jumped off their hooks and shattered.

  Davey Morgan lay on his back, numb, ears ringing. His face was wet. Rain? Blood?

  He could smell burned earth, heat, the fetid stink of deeply churned soil exposed to the surface for the first time in centuries. It was a smell he’d never forgotten, the smell of ’44.

  He could hear the crackle of flames, the tinkle of glass chips dropping out of broken window frames.

  He got up somehow, hauling on the doorframe. There was a bright light outside, a leaping orange glare. Ribbons of smoke oozed in through the gap where the backdoor had been.

  Davey Morgan reached the doorway. The yard had gone. The back path too, and the houses and allotments all the way over to Connault Way.

  They had been replaced by hell.

  The night was a black cave lit up by vast lakes of fire. The ground behind his house had been excavated and tilled by God’s own wrath, torn up, heaped, broken, scattered with debris, splintered fenceposts, mangled chunks of metal and tile. Spools of wire coiled from the banked mud. Burning hanks of ash and soot fluttered down.

  As Davey stood and gaped, volleys of mammoth explosions went off along the skyline, overlapping ripples of light-flash. Overpressure bent the air and fanned the flames. Carpet bombing, or heavy barrage, five miles out. He felt the delayed punch of it in his chest.

  He thought about ringing the police, but that was just daft. Like they didn’t know about this already. It would be on the news. He hadn’t had the radio on all day. What story had passed him by, what international crisis that would have led to the systematic bombing of Cathays?

  He saw a figure, fifty yards away, back-lit by the firestorms, striding slowly across the ruined ground towards him. A tall, thin silhouette, with sharp angles and slender limbs. Another, off to the left, slightly further away. Skinny, gangly, like some bloody teenage yobbo.

  No, not even slightly. Too tall. Too thin. Eight, nine feet tall, arms like broom handles. Hands like bunches of bananas.

  There were three of them now. Cartoon stick figures, with emaciated frames and giant hands. The firelight glinted off the nearest one. Flame-light off gunmetal, the wink of light catching brass or steel.

  From somewhere off to his right, beyond the house, tracer fire started up, the coughing chatter of a heavy weapon. The luminous rounds raked the fire-broken earth and tried to get the range of the approaching figures. Davey ducked down, involuntarily. Gunfire, find cover.

  The tracer rounds stitched explosive plumes of soil out of the ground around the nearest figure. It turned slightly, facing the origin of the gunfire, and something pulsed dull yellow on its head where its eyes should have been. Davey felt a scourging, invisible heat buckle the air. Off to the right, a crunching blast threw sparks up into the sky. The gunfire cut off abruptly.

  Davey tried to edge his way back into the ruined kitchen. The nearest shape had resumed its slow plod towards him.

  He saw it more clearly as it came closer, revealed by the light of the raging ground fires. Bone-thin legs, twice as long as a man’s, took long, measured strides across the churned ground. The legs carried a tall, narrow torso of paint-chipped metal and a head — set on a long, thin piston of a neck — that was half-skull, half-sculpture. Burnished metal features, cadaver-thin cheeks.

  ‘Go away!’ Davey cried. ‘Go away!’

  The thing’s gaze located him. A little hum, a slight change in pitch.

  A pulse of dull yellow where the eyes should have been-

  Davey Morgan woke up. It was pitch black. The luminous green hands of his alarm clock told him it was four o’clock gone.

  He lay there, shivering in his own sweat, listening to the rainstorm throwing itself against the bedroom windows.

  Just a dream. Just a bloody dream. Just a stupid-

  The noise that had woken him came again. Something was banging and knocking, persistently.

  Cold to the bone, Davey got up. His knee hurt when he put his weight onto it.

  The banging was close by. Like a door or a gate, tugged by the wind. He’d had this already. He’d been around this dream once already, and he didn’t want another bloody turn.

  He limped down the narrow stairs. Bang! Bang-bang! Bang! He gently touched the picture on the hall table as he went by. He tasted mint.

  He entered the kitchen. So much rain against the windows, the glass looked like it was melting. Bang! Bang-bang!

  ‘Who is it?’ he called. ‘Who’s there?’

  Bang! Bang! Bang-bang!

  Davey took a step towards the backdoor.

  The fan light of the kitchen window was ajar. He must have left it open. The gale had pulled it off its brace, and
now it was banging and jumping in its frame.

  Bang! Bang-bang! Bang!

  Davey fastened it. He checked the bolt on the backdoor.

  He went into the bathroom and turned the light on, squinting in the hard electric glare. The thing lay in the tub where he had left it. A heavy, rounded tube of paint-chipped metal about three feet long, topped by a featureless ovoid the size of a rugby ball. Tube and ovoid were made of the same metal, and had been joined with such engineering skill, Davey could locate no seam or weld.

  Davey lowered the toilet lid and made a chair out of it. He sat himself down carefully, holding onto the sink. The close air smelled of soap and mildewed bathmats.

  He faced the thing in the tub.

  ‘Right then,’ he said.

  A low hum.

  A slight change in pitch.

  TEN

  Owen woke up with a murmur, rolled over, and fell off the armchair.

  ‘Bollocks,’ he groaned. He blinked. Some awfully cheerful pop music was blaring from the bedroom. He was in the lounge, on the floor. Things did not add up.

  Nor could he make them add up for a moment. He had a vice squad raid of a headache kicking from room to room in his skull, and a mouth like the Lambies at low tide. His lip throbbed and every other ache and pain he’d taken the previous Thursday night seemed more acute than when they’d been inflicted.

  ‘Bollocks,’ he said again, and coughed. What day was it?

  He took stock. The drapes were open, and pale daylight flooded in. He was still dressed. One shirt sleeve was torn, and there was mud on one leg of his trousers. He had no memory of a heavy night. In fact he had no memory at all.

  He got up. That hurt. He swayed, dizzy. Swaying hurt too. He hobbled into the bedroom. Music was blaring from his clock radio. The clock radio on the bedside cabinet beside his unslept-in bed.

  A nauseatingly upbeat DJ segued in. ‘… and that’s the fabulous Four Play. Coming up on half nine now this Tuesday morning, and it’s the news with Gayle…’

  Tuesday. Right, Tuesday. That fits.

  Half nine? His alarm had been playing for two hours without waking him. Even given that he was in the other room, that was good going.

  ‘Christ,’ he said. He started dragging off his clothes.

  As he hopped through the lounge, unlacing one boot, he saw the plate on the table. The takeaway, untouched. A two-thirds-full bottle of beer beside it, standing in a small ring of water.

  He stopped hopping, because that really hurt.

  ‘What the bloody hell did you do last night, Harper?’ he asked himself.

  He went into the bathroom, turned on the shower, threw all his clothes and his boots into the laundry basket, cursed, fished his boots back out, and turned to look at himself in the mirror.

  The hot rush of the shower was already beginning to steam the edges of the mirror over the sink. Owen saw his pale face looking back through large letters that had been scrawled, wildly, on the mirror in lipstick.

  One word.

  BIG.

  ‘So where is everybody?’ asked Jack.

  ‘Well,’ replied Ianto and made an open-handed shrug.

  Jack looked around the Hub. ‘And I thought I’d slept in,’ he yawned.

  ‘Coffee’s on,’ said Ianto.

  Jack breathed in the aroma. ‘I know. At least something’s right with the world.’

  ‘Other aspects are marginally more wonky,’ said Ianto, handing Jack a piece of paper. ‘This flagged up first thing this morning. I thought you’d want to see it as soon as.’

  Jack read the page, nodding. ‘You know what this is?’

  ‘I seldom like to hazard a guess.’

  Jack shook the piece of paper. ‘This is a busy day ahead of us.’

  ‘One other thing,’ said Ianto.

  ‘Shoot.’

  The cog-door rolled open, and Toshiko hurried in, stifling a yawn. ‘Sorry,’ she called. ‘Sorry, I slept right through the alarm.’

  She started taking off her coat. Jack came over to her.

  ‘You wanna talk about it?’ Jack asked her quietly.

  ‘About what?’

  ‘Oversleeping?’

  ‘Nothing to talk about, I’m just tired. Ever since last week. I can’t shake it. Every morning I think I’m going to be back on form and-’ Another yawn overtook her. ‘Sorry. It seems to be getting worse. And the headache. I feel like I’ve been put through the pinger.’

  ‘The what?’

  ‘The ringer.’

  ‘You said “pinger”.’

  ‘I didn’t.’

  ‘You did, actually,’ Ianto called over.

  ‘Well, that’s how tired I am.’

  Jack looked quizzically at Toshiko. ‘That thing had real nasty after-effects, didn’t it?’

  ‘About that,’ said Ianto, joining them. ‘The thing I wanted to mention.’

  ‘Oh, yeah. Go on.’

  Ianto pointed over at Toshiko’s work station. ‘Should it be doing that?’

  They crossed to the desk. The day before, Toshiko had locked the Amok away in its containment box. They could hear it. It was tapping against the metal insides of the container.

  ‘Wow,’ said Jack.

  ‘I heard it when I came in. At first, I thought Owen had got himself locked in the cells again.’

  Toshiko peered at the box. ‘It was dormant when we first got it contained.’

  ‘It’s not dormant now,’ returned Jack. ‘It’s sounding quite feisty.’

  ‘We should check it,’ Toshiko said, shooting a sidelong look at Jack. He nodded.

  She popped on her eye-guards and slid the containment box back into the field zone of the containment console. Stainless-steel clamps automatically gripped the base of the box and rotated it into alignment with a whine. Toshiko closed the Lexan cover. The touch of a switch brought suspension fields up, bathing the box in a pulsing blue glow. Graphic analysis display projected across the dome of the Lexan hemisphere.

  ‘I’m setting level ten safeguards. Maximum focus blockers, everything we have, and additional inhibitors. Grade K firewalls, Ianto. We know how aggressive this thing can be.’

  Ianto nodded. At a neighbouring sub-console, he ran his fingers over the keyboard. Graphics scrolled on his relay screen.

  ‘OK,’ said Toshiko. She depressed a switch. The interlock collar of the containment box unbolted magnetically, and slid back. The suspension field flickered.

  The Amok, manipulated by delicate hawsers of gravity, rose up out of the box and hung in the blue glow, revolving slowly. The graphics on the Lexan dome, and those on Toshiko and Ianto’s screens, went into overdrive.

  ‘The Killer Sudoku from the Planet Mind-Screw is not happy,’ noted Toshiko.

  ‘That much is obvious,’ said Jack, staring.

  ‘Firewalls?’ Toshiko called out to Ianto.

  ‘It’s eaten through three, but we’re holding it now.’

  Toshiko pointed at the projection display. ‘Elevated energetic behaviour. Some heat dissipation. There’s some edge-spectrum stuff there I don’t begin to understand. Nasty. Very agitated. Very angry.’

  Jack nodded. ‘I don’t think it likes the fact we spoiled its games. I don’t think it likes the fact we locked it up in a box that deprived it of all external sensory input.’ He looked at Toshiko. ‘I think it wants someone to play with it.’

  Toshiko shuddered. ‘I know we’ve got bleeding-edge inhibitors screening us from its effect, but I’m feeling ill just looking at it.’

  Ianto raised a hand. ‘Headache,’ he reported.

  ‘Psychosomatic,’ said Jack. ‘It’s just freaking us out. It can’t stand the fact it can’t get to us.’ He leaned closer and grinned at the rotating metal solid. ‘Can you?’

  He glanced back at Toshiko. ‘Even so, box it up, lock it tight, and put it in an isoclave in the vault until we’ve got time to deactivate it or even disassemble it.’

  ‘We don’t have that time now?’ asked Toshiko.
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  ‘No,’ Jack replied. ‘Pressing matters.’ He handed her the sheet of paper Ianto had give him.

  Toshiko read it. ‘I don’t understand this…’

  ‘Seeing as no one else has turned up for work, looks like this one’s down to you and me. Ianto, maybe you could give everyone a call and remind them they work for me?’

  ‘On it,’ said Ianto, reaching for his cell.

  ‘I still don’t get it.’ said Toshiko. ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘We’re going to the chapel, baby,’ said Jack.

  Despite careful oiling, the barrow’s wheel still squeaked.

  Davey trundled it up the path to the allotments. The sky was bare and white, like plain paper. A nothing day, caught in a trough between bits of weather. At least there was no rain yet.

  The ground smelled strongly of the overnight downpour: rich earth smells and raw vegetation. Drains gurgled as they drank down the overspill. Birds sang in the hedges with sharp, whetted voices.

  He’d intended to evict his guest in the small hours, after the dream. The storm had blown out around four thirty, and the sky had cleared so suddenly there had been stars. Davey, dressed in readiness by then, had put on his digging jacket and gone out into the wet blackness.

  But it had been a cold, sinister hour. A dome of sky like polished jet, the prickle of stars, the amber glow of Cardiff. Roofs and chimneys were key-tooth silhouettes against the air. Somewhere, a dog-fox was barking her pitiful saw-edged yap. It was coming from streets away across the plots, the baleful cry of winter’s onset.

  It had made Davey feel solitary and vulnerable. He went back indoors and decided to wait for morning.

  He flicked on the light in the bathroom and sat down again.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘but I’ll have to move you back tomorrow. I can’t-’

  He had paused. The hum intoned softly.

  ‘I can’t have you in the house, I don’t think. Sorry. I need my sleep, and I can’t be having dreams like that. Your dreams, weren’t they?’

  No answer.

  ‘I think they were. I think I just brushed against them. Anyway, sorry.’

  In the cold daylight, he wheeled the barrow up to the shed and unlocked the door. A few things had blown over in the night, but nothing had suffered human disturbance.