“I do not need protecting!”
“Of course you don’t,” I said. “I just did it for my own peace of mind.”
Molly scowled at me and then turned her glare on the gaping hole in the wall. She batted at the remaining smoke with her hands. “What the hell just happened? Did we trigger some kind of booby-trap, or is Kali mad at us?”
“That was an exterior wall,” I said. “Something hit it from outside. The Hall is under attack.”
“Why would anyone want to attack an empty Hall?” said Molly.
“I have every intention of finding out,” I said. “And then making it clear to whoever did this just how extremely displeased I am.”
“I’ll help,” said Molly.
“Thought you’d want to,” I said.
I felt strong and fast and good inside my armour. As though I’d just been kicked awake, out of the long doze of everyday living. I didn’t care if there was a whole army outside in the grounds; I was ready to take them all on and look good doing it. I glanced at Kali, standing untouched in her alcove. She looked like she approved.
I stepped through the jagged hole in the wall and strode out into the grounds of Drood Hall. It was a bright, sunny afternoon, under a cloudless sky, and a dozen armoured tanks stood arrayed on the lawns before me, their long guns covering the whole side of the Hall. Large, heavy death machines, with stylised military badges to make it clear they represented MI 13. Heavy whining sounds carried clearly on the still air as all the turrets turned as one, bringing their long barrels to bear on me. Enough massed firepower to reduce the whole of Drood Hall to rubble. It would probably have impressed anyone else. A small army of uniformed soldiers backed up the tanks—maybe two hundred men, all of them heavily armed and bearing the same MI 13 military insignia. Molly stepped through the hole in the wall to join me, took in the view, and smiled happily.
“Just when I was thinking I could really use someone to take out the day’s events on . . . How nice of them to volunteer. So, MI Thirteen is a military operation in this world.”
“How bad are things here that the Government’s department for dealing with weird shit needs tanks and soldiers to get the job done?” I said.
“Don’t know, don’t care,” Molly said cheerfully. “All that matters is they chose the wrong day to annoy me. Not that there ever is a good day. Mind you, they do look very smart in their nice uniforms, don’t they?”
“Oh, they do,” I said. “Very smart. Have you by any chance noticed that all the tanks are pointing their guns at us?”
“I had noticed, yes. How very rude of them. I think we should do something about that.”
“Something violent and horribly destructive?”
“How well you know me,” said Molly.
The smartly uniformed soldiers looked at me in my gleaming golden armour, and then at Molly’s happy, smiling face, and went straight from hard-eyed professionalism to mass panic. Shouts and curses and clear sounds of distress rose, followed by a general lowering of weapons. Some of the soldiers turned to run, only to be herded back again by furiously shouting officers. I had to smile, behind my featureless golden face mask. They had no idea how bad things were about to get.
“What kind of soldiers are these?” said Molly. “Half of them look like they’re bricking themselves.”
“That’s what I like to see,” I said. “Proper respect for my family.”
“I think they’re more afraid of the Kali-worshipping Droods,” said Molly. “That’s not respect I’m seeing; more like stark terror.”
“I can live with that,” I said.
The tanks suddenly opened fire, targeting Molly and me with everything they had. The noise was deafening. The tanks fired again and again, as fast as their gunners could load new shells. I just stood there and let them get on with it. Most of the shells were absorbed harmlessly by my armour. A few exploded squarely against my chest, but I didn’t even rock under the impact. Molly stood calmly beside me, inside a shimmering field of protective energies. Any shell that got anywhere near her just vanished.
We both looked steadily back at the wide array of tanks, entirely unmoved by the continuing onslaught. Every now and then I’d wave at the huddled ranks of soldiers, just to show I hadn’t forgotten them. They didn’t look at all happy about that. One by one the gunners stopped firing, as they either ran out of shells or lost the will to continue. It can’t be easy, trying to kill someone who just stands there and calmly refuses to be killed. Eventually I slapped a shell out of mid-air with the back of my hand, and it exploded not far from the nearest soldiers, showering them with earth and grass. The officers had to do a lot more shouting to get their men to hold their positions.
“Okay,” said Molly, “you’re just playing with them now, and I’m getting bored. Not to mention impatient. We need to teach these uniformed bully-boys some manners, so we can get on with what we came here for.”
“Couldn’t agree more,” I said.
I charged forward across the lawn. My armoured legs drove me on at more-than-human speed, my heavy golden feet digging great divots out of the ground. I closed the distance between myself and the tanks so quickly they couldn’t traverse their barrels fast enough to keep up with me. I went straight for the nearest tank, lowered one golden shoulder, and rammed it. Steel shields ruptured, and the sheer force of the impact drove the tank back several feet. I grabbed hold of the metal shielding with both hands and ripped it apart. The steel screamed as my golden gloves tore it like paper. The tank’s barrel tried to lower itself towards me, and I hit it so hard I bent it in half, pointing the end away from me. I did think about tying the barrel in a knot, but that would have felt like showing off. I braced myself, took a firm hold of the tank, and picked the whole thing up. Its heavy treads spun wildly as the engines strained uselessly. I threw the tank away from me. It crashed heavily, some distance away, flipped end over end two or three times, and then the engines cut out.
Another tank powered in my direction, lowering its barrel as much as it could to target me. As though getting in close would make any difference. I ran forward, ducked under the barrel, grabbed hold of the tank, and turned the whole thing over onto its side, enjoying the muffled screams from inside. Then I looked around for another tank. I was enjoying myself. I always feel better when the world gives me an opportunity to do something unpleasant about all the things that have been getting on my nerves. There’s nothing like giving an enemy a really good slapping to improve your day.
All the remaining tanks were reversing now, their operators desperate to get as far away from me as they could. Their heavy treads dug deep into the grassy lawn, throwing churned-up grass and earth in every direction and making one hell of a mess. I thought of how much work the family gardeners would have to do to put everything right, and then I remembered. A cold fury rose in me. I turned away from the retreating tanks to face the waiting soldiers, and stalked towards them with vengeance on my mind. Because someone had to pay for what my life had become.
I felt strong and fast and sure. How can I be dying when I feel so strong? Except, of course, it wasn’t me; it was the armour.
Soldiers with heavy automatic weapons hurried forward to face me, driven on by officers screaming themselves hoarse from the rear. The soldiers’ faces were grim but determined. Their guns looked odd to me. Standard types, but not any make I knew. And I’ve faced off against any number of weapons in my time. The soldiers all opened fire at once, and bullets slammed into my armour again and again, to no effect. They couldn’t even slow my advance.
Information flashed up on the inside of my mask, as my armour absorbed the various bullets and analysed them. My armour always absorbs bullets, rather than let them ricochet and possibly injure some innocent bystander. Though I was pretty sure there weren’t any of those around just at the moment. I was interested to discover that the soldiers were firing a wide assortm
ent of ammunition. Blessed and cursed, garlic coated and mercury tipped, even depleted uranium with crosses carved into them. Apparently this version of MI 13 liked to be prepared for all eventualities. They had something to stop anyone—except a really upset Drood in his armour.
Seeing that they were getting nowhere with me, the soldiers turned their guns on Molly as she sauntered forward to join me, not wanting to be left out of the action. I wasn’t worried. The moment the soldiers opened fire on Molly, she gestured imperiously and all their bullets turned into butterflies. Big, bright, and colourful, the butterflies immediately turned around and flapped determinedly towards the soldiers, who threw away their weapons and ran, shouldering their officers out of the way.
“Wimps!” Molly yelled after them.
While she was busy doing that, another solider stepped forward and fired his bazooka at her at point-blank range. Molly spun round, her shields flaring up to stand off an exploding shell. Instead, a glowing net erupted from the bazooka, spreading out as it flew through the air. Molly gestured at it dismissively, but the net just kept coming. It fell upon her, passing through her shields as though they weren’t even there. The glowing strands snapped around Molly in a moment, and then constricted sharply until she could barely move. Some kind of magic neutraliser. It seemed this MI 13 had experience when it came to dealing with really powerful witches.
I started towards Molly. I didn’t care what that net was made of; I was going to rip it apart with my golden hands. But Molly glared at me and shook her head furiously.
“No! Don’t you dare, Eddie Drood! I am more than capable of rescuing myself. You go deal with those damned soldiers.”
I stopped and nodded. I could have freed her, but I knew that if I did it would be a really long time before she forgave me. Interfering would be proof that I had no faith in her abilities, that I didn’t think she could pull her weight. Molly needed to feel she was an equal partner to a Drood in his armour, and, to be fair, most of the time she was. So I headed straight for the nearest soldiers, to take my anger out on them.
Most of them threw away their guns and ran for their lives, followed by their hysterically screaming officers. I let them go. It’s nice to be appreciated.
On the edge of my mask’s wide peripheral vision, I saw Molly produce a very ordinary, entirely nonmagical knife and start sawing through the strands of the net. Half a dozen soldiers were racing across the lawns, desperate to get to her before she could free herself and regain control of her magics. So I just happened to change my course a little, placing my armoured body between them and Molly, so they couldn’t open fire on her. I could get away with that much. The soldiers shied away from me, giving me plenty of room, but kept going.
Molly kept a careful eye on them as she cut through one strand after another, until suddenly the net stopped glowing. It quickly fell away, and Molly’s magical energies flared up around her again. The soldiers crashed to a halt. She smiled nastily at them and raised one hand, and the soldiers turned and ran. Molly looked after them thoughtfully, in a way I knew meant she was seriously thinking about transforming them into small squishy things and then stamping on them. But she didn’t, because she knew I wouldn’t approve. Mad as I was at the world, I only wanted the soldiers punished, not dead.
Molly turned abruptly to look at me, to make sure I wasn’t taking an undue interest in what she was doing, but by then I was carefully concentrating on the soldiers before me. One lobbed a grenade at me, and I snatched it out of mid-air. I studied the thing carefully. Again, it wasn’t any make I was familiar with. The dully gleaming exterior was etched with ancient Nordic death runes. I closed my golden hand around the grenade and braced myself, ready to contain the explosion . . . But instead coruscating energies flared up around my hand, rapidly swelling into a deepening vortex. I tried to jerk my hand back, and found I couldn’t. It was stuck in the heart of the field.
Something grabbed hold of my armoured hand and jerked it deeper into the vortex. My hand and wrist disappeared, as though the cloud of crackling energies was much deeper than it appeared. I dug my heels deep into the ground as the pull came again, but despite everything I could do I was jerked forward, my arm disappearing into the vortex right up to the elbow. Air whistled past me, sucked in from all directions by the energy field. Great tufts of earth and grass were ripped out of the surrounding lawns, and sucked in by the shimmering energies. And all the time I was fighting the pull with all the strength I had, struggling to break free—and failing.
I knew what the problem was now: I’d been stupid enough to let an implosion grenade detonate. I’d heard of them, because I make it a point to keep up to date with all the latest unpleasantness, but I’d never encountered one before. An explosion in reverse, designed to draw in everything in the vicinity and then compress it down to nothing. The perfect way to kill your enemy and leave no evidence behind. I’d never heard of one being used against a Drood before, so I had no idea how to fight it. The energy field yanked me forward another step, sucking my arm in well past the elbow. I could feel a growing pressure on the part of my arm I couldn’t see, and if I could feel that through my armour, it had to be seriously strong. As in, bottom-of-the-ocean, tons-of-pressure-per-square-inch strong.
I thought quickly. Some of the soldiers were firing their guns at me while I was distracted, more in a spirit of optimism than anything else. I let my armour absorb the bullets while I concentrated on the problem before me. Brute strength might not be enough to break me free of the field, but I was still willing to bet the strange matter of my armour against whatever energies the field could produce. So I stopped fighting the pull and stepped forward, right into the heart of the vortex.
The world around me disappeared, replaced by flaring energies so bright and vivid they were beyond colour. A terrible pressure clamped down on me from all sides, as if I were being crushed in the hand of God. And then the appalling forces of the energy vortex met the implacable power of my armour . . . and the field just collapsed. The world reappeared, the air around me lightly dusted with the last dissipating traces of implosion energies. I held my armoured arm up before me and turned my hand back and forth. Not even a dent.
The soldiers cried out in shock and alarm as I turned unhurriedly to face them, and then they fell silent. There’s something about the lack of eyes in my golden face mask that really freaks people out.
The implosion grenade had been a pretty good idea. It might even have worked against the old Heart armour. But MI 13 had never met a Drood like me. Molly ambled over, nodding casually, as though it had never even occurred to her I might be in trouble. And quite possibly it hadn’t. One of the soldiers said something very bad and threw a grenade at us. Molly snapped her fingers and the grenade exploded well short of us. A nasty-looking purple gas billowed out. Molly gestured at it dismissively, and the gas swept back to envelop the soldiers. They were forced to retreat, gagging and choking.
The remaining soldiers opened fire on me and Molly, hitting us with everything they had. I charged forward, crossing the intervening ground in seconds, and was quickly in and among them. I punched out the nearest soldier, and his head snapped right back, blood spurting from a ruined nose and mouth. I back-elbowed another in the gut, bending him in two, and swept the legs out from under a third. I ploughed on through the rest of the soldiers, sending them flying. Guns opened up on me at point-blank range, but my armour just sucked in the bullets. Some soldiers slammed their gun butts against my head and neck, as though that would have more effect than bullets. I just knocked the soldiers down and trampled them underfoot and kept going. I was grinning inside my mask, and it was a good thing the soldiers couldn’t see. It felt like a death’s-head grin. I started picking soldiers up and throwing them away, and men flew through the air like uniformed Frisbees. They hit the ground hard, and took their time getting up again.
I was still holding back. Human bodies can be very frail when f
aced with the awful strength of Drood armour. Besides, God alone knew how many deaths could be laid at the doors of the Kali-worshipping Droods. There was always a chance MI 13 were the good guys. And, anyway, I don’t kill unless I have to. I’m a secret agent, not an assassin.
It wasn’t like the soldiers presented any real threat to me . . .
But even as I swept them aside with my golden arms, or clubbed down the stubborn ones, my cold anger returned. Remembering how the soldiers had attacked without warning, blown a hole in my home . . . and threatened my Molly. They had tried to kill me, not knowing Dr DOA had already done that. I couldn’t get to him, but the soldiers were right there in front of me. This wasn’t my world, after all, so maybe the old rules and restrictions didn’t apply. I could do anything I wanted here, anything I felt like, and no one would ever bring me to book for it. I was dying. Didn’t I have the right to take some measure of vengeance on an uncaring world?
I grabbed the nearest soldier by the throat and lifted him off the ground. His feet kicked helplessly and his eyes bulged as I began choking the life out of him. I needed to punish someone for what had been done to me. It was only fair that someone should suffer, as I had been made to suffer. But then the moment passed. I wasn’t a killer. I let go of the soldier and he fell to the ground, gasping for breath and clutching at his bruised throat. I stood there, looking down at him with my featureless mask, thinking about what I’d almost done. The soldier scrambled away from me, and I let him go.
It didn’t matter what the Droods had made of themselves in this world. I was a different kind of Drood, and I would remain the kind of man I’d chosen to be. Right till the end.
Moonbreaker Page 3