The Ruby Celeste Series - Box Set, books 1 - 3: Ghost Armada, Dire Kraken, and Church of Ife

by Nicholas J. Ambrose

  “Listen,” she hissed. “You are going to pick up that shroud for me. If you don’t have any security measures, there’s no problem, right? So. Freddy. Walk.”

  He did not move. Only stared, breath catching.

  Marcette pushed the gun harder into his flesh. “Walk.”

  Frederick’s inhale shook. “You don’t understand.”

  Marcette’s face contorted. Impulses behind her trigger finger screamed to pull and blast the fucker’s head off—then she shoved him back with one arm, and smashed him in the nose.

  Frederick gasped. Blood spattered.

  Before he could clamp a hand over the white hot pain, Marcette’s gun pressed his forehead.

  “Last chance,” she said. “Walk.”

  For a moment she thought perhaps this Frederick was different. Made of stronger stuff than the others, the way he glared over the wreck of his nose. He’d issue a ‘No’ through bloodied teeth, and Marcette would have to cave his head in and either take his word for it, or find someone else to test his claim.

  And yet he did not. Frederick did open his mouth to show teeth wet with blood, and he spat a dark glob at his feet. Then he said one haggard word, with all the hate in the world: “Fine.”

  The plinth on which the shroud lay rose above the room’s floor: a circular base extended around it, six steps leading up.

  Frederick climbed, leaving a trickle of blood behind him. Marcette avoided the spatters—wouldn’t want to slip, after all—and followed.

  The base flattened in a three-metre wide circle, podium and shroud in the very middle. It was folded neatly, and de Fayre saw two things as she faced it: first, it was old. Its intertwined threads were clearly centuries, even millennia, before her time.

  And second: it was not the colour of blood precisely; it had not quite enough of the blackish quality fresh blood possessed when spilled in copious enough quantities. But it was deepest crimson. Almost as if, though time had passed and the shroud had aged, its colour had failed to fade.

  Frederick stopped just short. Not quite close enough to touch.

  He gave Marcette a dark look.

  She matched it.

  “You don’t understand,” he tried again.

  “What?” she demanded. “What don’t I understand? You have five seconds to explain before I blow the top of your head off, and add another shade of red to that fucking cloth.”

  Frederick inhaled. “The shroud has strange properties. We don’t have protection set up, but anyone that gets too close—it—”

  “Five,” said Marcette.

  “It hurts people—!”

  Frederick’s mouth sprayed claret. Again, the butt of Marcette’s pistol whipped his face. Across the cheek, this time. There was a mighty CRACK with it, and Frederick could not tell if it was the sound of impact, or if beneath that white, burning heat, his cheekbone had fractured.

  “Story time is over,” Marcette said. “Now pick it up.”

  He did not move.

  “Pick it up!”

  “You don’t under—”

  “I said, PICK IT UP!”

  And before Frederick could react, Marcette wrapped her hands around his head. She spun him and shoved. His legs struggled to catch up, but neither could—

  Then there was unyielding pressure, and pain—Frederick roared—then it broke like elastic, and he sprawled across the podium, across the shroud, and everything was on fire, everything—he was screaming—

  Marcette yelped. The air was alive with electricity. Every machine in the room roared to life. The lights brightened from yellow to blinding white.

  She flung herself from the podium, landed lopsided on her feet and staggered around, darting backward.

  Against the shroud, Frederick’s body convulsed. He screamed—and as the lights grew brighter, his wail turned electric. Awful light erupted from his eyes and mouth in beams, as though a great fiery lantern had been ignited inside him, streaming through every opening it could find.

  Higher and higher, his pitch; louder and louder, the room; brighter and brighter, the lights. Then, as Marcette screwed her eyes up and slammed hands into her ears to block it out—it ended. The light returned to normal. All the noise, save for a kind of powering down sound, ceased as the machines died.

  Slowly, de Fayre prised her eyes open.

  Frederick was—

  Gone?

  Breathing short and heavy, she inched toward the stepped platform. His blood spatters were still present, tracing the path he had taken. Up each of the six steps, it went. Across the topmost surface, which Marcette daren’t touch …

  But nothing more. Every other trace of Frederick was gone.

  Marcette stared at the shroud. It sat, folded neatly.

  As though it had not been touched at all.

  6

  No wonder this place was so well-protected. An object like that, with its ‘strange properties’—that was a fucking understatement, considering it had apparently vaporised the man she shoved headlong into its dias—of course these people wanted to research it.

  The question now, was: what to do?

  Marcette first ascertained Frederick’s cries had not roused anyone remaining in the complex. It was fortunate she had slid the door closed on entry. Regardless, she tracked back up the metal steps to the upper walkway.

  She eased the door open and peered up the corridor.

  Though she waited several long minutes, no one came, and no other noise issued from the complex. Except de Fayre’s breaths and her thumping heart, which refused to calm, only silence cloaked her.

  Good.

  She pushed the door closed, and returned to the room’s floor.

  She fixed the shroud with a scowl. How in the world was she supposed to move it?

  Find something to pick it up with.

  She cast around. It wouldn’t be difficult to break some of the instruments trained on the shroud. Several even reminded her of foot-long tongs. Those would be ideal.

  But did that guarantee personal safety? Was direct contact the problem, or had Frederick been fried indirectly, through his clothes? And if that was the case, what kind of range did that thing have?

  Slow and careful, Marcette stalked back up the steps to the place she’d stood with Frederick before the shit hit the fan.

  Nothing. She was not near enough.

  How close to move?

  Eyes never leaving the folded crimson cloth, Marcette inched forward. Her heart was really thumping now; not its usual steady calm at all. Her breath held, as every little footfall brought her an inch, two, closer … closer …

  Close enough to touch, now.

  And still there was nothing.

  Would she feel anything? Or would she simply move and move and move until it was too late? There one moment; screaming and on fire the next; then gone. Vanished.

  Running a tongue across her top lip, Marcette thought. She tried to pinpoint exactly the moment Frederick had started screaming.

  It was difficult. Her brain had jumbled in the chaos. But … it was when he touched the shroud, Marcette was sure. Or as close to it as to be touching.

  Get those grabber things, she thought. Pick it up with that.

  But another voice overrode. The voice of a curious child, perhaps—or the corrupted whispers of a mad man, a dark man—

  Marcette lifted her free hand. Tentative. It moved, fingers reaching. Eleven inches … ten … nine …

  At eight, she found something. The air changed. There was pressure. Solid but yielding, like a great bubble with an elastic surface. She pushed, and it pushed back. But its strength was less, and if she pressed just a little harder, so the bubble popped …

  The door behind opened.

  Marcette darted back, tearing her hand away. The hairs on the back of her hand had sprung up without her realising, and now fell lank.

  The pistol rose. Her finger squeezed against the trigger, ready to shoot—

  Yet it was not a guard who stepped i
n, but a little girl. No older than eight or nine, in a long red dress. Straight dark hair hung, and her fringe drew a line directly above her eyes. Eyes now looking at Marcette—not with accusation, not with fear. Not with anything.

  Marcette did not move.

  The child came down the stairs. She was barefoot, Marcette realised as the folds of her dress shifted.

  At the bottom now. Still, Marcette kept the gun trained on the child. Ready to pull the trigger. And she would, she absolutely would. She had proven that before.

  The girl walked silently to the stepped platform. There she paused, looking at the shroud. Then she turned to Marcette … and nodded.

  Why why why did this make sweat oil her palms?

  The child placed a foot on the first step.

  Marcette’s jaw unhinged. “Who are you?”

  The little girl paused and looked plainly back.

  Marcette repeated, “Who are you?”

  The girl tapped her mouth, and shook her head.

  “Mute? You don’t speak?”

  The girl nodded. Correct.

  “Merde.”

  The child moved up another step, but Marcette brandished the pistol harder and said, “Wait, wait, I didn’t say you could move.”

  The girl fell still. Plain eyes looked back. Plain eyes that should have been full of fear, yet weren’t.

  “What are you doing here? What do you want?”

  The girl nodded her head toward the shroud, then Marcette. Her head tilted.

  Marcette scowled. “I don’t understand.”

  The girl looked put-upon. As though the gestures she made were perfectly clear, and it was de Fayre’s brain failing at the translation.

  She resumed climbing the stairs.

  Shoot, said one side of Marcette. Wait, said the other. See.

  At the top of the platform, the girl gave Marcette another plain look. The gun was still pointed straight at her head, and from this short distance—there was a metre in it, no more—it should have terrified her. Yet her nerves were not rustled.

  Somehow, the kid was calmer than de Fayre.

  Her brown eyes alighted on the shroud again. She stepped for it.

  “I wouldn’t do that,” Marcette warned in spite of herself. “It did a number on your friend.”

  Put-upon, again.

  A standoff.

  “Fine.” Marcette backed away, ready to run. “Your funeral.”

  The child did not care. She simply turned back to the dias, and approached on those naked feet of hers.

  Marcette waited. Watched as small hands with long fingers reached. Any moment now she would break through that invisible shield … any moment she would touch it … and any moment chaos would erupt again, and this child would disappear just the same as Frederick. With a lot of light, a lot of noise, and what was undoubtedly a whole lot of pain.

  The distance closed … Marcette prepared to spring …

  The child’s hands closed on the shroud. And—

  Nothing.

  No light.

  No noise; no rage from suddenly living machines, flooding with energy.

  No screams. No pain.

  The child lifted the shroud from the dias, and hugged it to her chest. Large that it was though folded, it was longer than her torso, the bottom hanging almost to her knees. Two tones of red clashed: her bright dress, and the deep crimson of the shroud.

  “What—? How—?”

  The child simply looked back. Then she unfolded one arm from her prize, and extended it, hand out to Marcette.

  … to hold?

  For a second, Marcette stared. This child had touched—was touching, right now—the shroud she’d just seen wipe a man off the face of Vomer. And that same child now held out a hand, like a daughter to a mother. Wanting to hold. To … to go with her? To bring the shroud? Willingly? Was that it?

  Marcette’s eyes flickered to the shroud in the girl’s grip. “I’m not going near that thing.”

  The child twisted her body away. Shielding Marcette from shroud; shroud from Marcette.

  One more long moment, de Fayre weighed it up.

  “Fine,” she said. She wiped her free hand on her trousers, and placed it in the little girl’s. “But remember this.” She wagged the pistol.

  A solemn nod from the child.

  “Let’s go, then.”

  They moved. Marcette led. Hand in hand all the way. Up the stairs … through the door … back along empty stretches of corridor … through the mouth of the temple … across the clearing—here the child paid no heed to the bodies, just as she had given no second glance to Frederick’s blood—and through the trees. Eventually they arrived at La Vie, a dark glob in the night at the island’s precipice.

  Marcette unhooked her hand. “Don’t get any funny ideas.”

  She strode to the Pod and opened its side door. She gestured the child close—now would be the perfect time for the kid to give her a flying shove and send her to a watery grave miles and miles below—and followed after the girl had filed in.

  Pods were tight vessels. Room for a single Volum, several supercharged batteries, plus a small amount of storage space. There was no true bathroom; space-saving measures meant it was just a fold-out chute of sorts everything went into. Pilots needed to hover over it, because except for the squared rim of the chute door, there was no seat.

  A single chair occupied the space in front of the viewing window and curved console.

  Beside it was a mess of blankets. Underneath, objects Marcette liked to keep close. The discarded binoculars, for one. But there were also books to pass the time, and not religious texts. No way. High-energy protein bars had fallen amidst the folds of fabric. Empty wrappers, too.

  The girl waited by the rear wall. Marcette considered.

  “Right,” she said. She moved for the pile of blankets, shaking them out. A shower of crumbs fell.

  “You can have these,” she told the girl. Using a foot to sweep the books and binoculars and protein bars aside, she set up a kind of nest by her seat. “Okay?”

  The girl nodded. She padded over, leaving dirty footprints which Marcette scowled at with no hint of irony.

  Settled in the blankets, still enfolding the shroud, the girl looked up at de Fayre.

  Waiting.

  Marcette settled into her seat. “Pierre.”

  His computerised voice answered flatly: “Listening.”

  “We’re done here. Draw a path to take us to New Calais.”

  “Computing …” Then, a few seconds later: “Instruction received.”

  At the same moment, the Pod kicked into life. It was near-silent, sound only really detectable to people who spent all their time in the things.

  It reversed away from the island’s edge. Turned.

  Behind its dark front window, Marcette watched the world move. The girl, silent by her side, did the same.

  7

  It took three days of fast travel to get to New Calais.

  Not once had the little girl spoken. She had taken food and water, and pointed at La Vie’s waste chute when she needed to go. And wasn’t that a fun experience. Pods were designed for adult occupants, not mute eight-year-old girls who were not tall enough to make use of its features. Marcette had had to hold the child up—shroud deposited safely far away from her, of course—so the girl could do her business. At least she had that dress. Limited faff: no removal of shoes and jeans and underwear. Just yank the underwear off, drag the dress up to waist height—the girl held that, which was good, because Marcette might have packed the whole lot in and tossed girl and shroud out the Pod’s door otherwise—and away she went. With no way of speaking to indicate she had finished, the girl rustled her bunched dress. Done. Down.

  Marcette had asked things. Who she was; where she’d come from. Why she could touch the shroud without lighting up like a firework. The mute thing could be a lie, she reasoned. But if it was, the girl was committed to it.

  When Marcette slept, it was wi
th one eye open. Two would be better. It would be just her lucky stars that she would nod off, and the girl would spring up and plant the shroud on her face. Like smothering, but far, far worse.

  Pierre, La Vie’s dumb computer, kept an eye, ready to chime if the girl moved too much. Marcette would be straight up then. Only, Pierre did not need to. When Marcette slept, the girl slept. Longer, even. All the time in that nest of blankets, arms wrapped around the crimson shroud. Like it was a teddy bear.

  Finally, with New Calais in sight (and there was no missing it; not the way it had been constructed), Marcette radioed for Abraham. The call was answered almost immediately. Not by him, of course not, but one of his followers. Marcette said who she was, and that was enough. Abraham was on less than twenty seconds later, excited and collectedly ministerial all at once. He was pleased she had acquired the shroud, very pleased; and yes, he would be ready and waiting to meet her. Yes, with her payment, of course he would bring it, she need not worry about that. He was a religious man, after all.

  Marcette sneered. Stuffy old creep. Religious folk weren’t any less likely to screw a girl over. She had found that out several times, and doubtless would several more before she pointed La Vie south and disappeared into the arms of retirement.

  New Calais was a strangely constructed place. An island with a great, towering cathedral forged from white rock sat in the middle. Around its edges were eight smaller islands. These were connected to each other and the central cathedral by thick walkways, iridescent in the autumn sun.

  La Vie swam toward one of New Calais’s parking bays.

  Abraham was waiting. In his flowing red robe, he looked not unlike the strange child sat to Marcette’s left.

  When the Pod had fallen still, Marcette rose. The child did not need an instruction to do the same.

  She exited.

  Abraham stood unnervingly close to the door. His arms were wide and open. It was either the stance he took when parroting one of his undoubtedly unbearable sermons, or he was preparing to wrap Marcette in an embrace.

  She held up a hand to prevent the latter. “Stand back.”

  Abraham looked mildly curious, but obliged.

  The little girl stepped out onto the walkway. Both arms encircled the shroud against her chest. She blinked against the light, and cast a brief, curious look around. Then her eyes landed on Marcette. Waiting. Always waiting.