Live and Let Drood: A Secret Histories Novel (50 page)

The Armourer’s lab assistants were crawling all over Alpha Red Alpha, clinging precariously to outcropping parts, making adjustments, taking readings and occasionally just hitting it with hammers in a hopeful sort of way.

The Armourer himself came bustling forward to meet us—a tall middle-aged man with too much intelligence and nervous energy for his own good, wearing the usual stained and slightly charred lab coat over a T-shirt reading
Eat, Shoot and Leave.
He was quite bald, apart from two tufts of white hair jutting out over his ears, from where he
kept tugging at them while he was thinking, and bushy white eyebrows protruding over steely grey eyes. He also had a permanent stoop, from years of leaning over workstations for long hours, designing useful dangerous things for the family. He beamed happily at me, nodded happily to Molly and then stopped dead as he saw who was with us. The Regent stepped forward to smile gently at him.

“Dad?” said the Armourer. His mouth worked for a moment, as though he couldn’t figure out what to say. And then he plunged forward and hugged the Regent close. It did look a bit odd from the outside. There was a lot of hugging going on today, and we’re really not a touchy-feely kind of family on the whole. The Armourer finally let the Regent go and held him at arm’s length so he could look him over properly.

“It’s been such a long time, Dad! I did my best to keep in touch, but it hasn’t been easy. I did think you might come home again when Mum died.…”

“It would only have complicated things,” said the Regent. “At a time when you really didn’t need…distractions.”

“You’re looking great!” said the Armourer. “I told you that serum would work.”

And then he finally looked past the Regent, at Patrick and Diana, and his whole face just shut down, as though it didn’t know what to do. He looked blankly at them, and they just looked quietly back.

“I can’t believe you’re here,” the Armourer said finally. “I can’t believe you’ve come back at last.” He broke off, looked at me and then back at the Regent. “You haven’t told him, have you? Why haven’t you told him? He has a right to know!”

“Because it isn’t the right time,” the Regent said firmly. “Far too much going on right now. He doesn’t need to be distracted.”

“I’ll decide what I need to know and when I need to know it,” I said just as firmly. “What’s going on here?”

“I will tell you everything once this mess is over,” said the Regent. “I give you my word.”

The Armourer frowned at Patrick and Diana and then nodded
slowly. “He’s right, Eddie. You need to focus on what’s in front of you. We all do. Just…trust us. For now.”

“All right,” I said. “For now. Talk to me about what’s happening here.”

“We’ve been working on Alpha Red Alpha nonstop, ever since the bloody thing started up for no reason and dumped us here,” said the Armourer, giving the dimensional engine his best
There’s going to be trouble
scowl. “Power levels are fine. Everything’s doing what I think it should be doing, but…”

“You don’t have the proper return coordinates,” I said. I ran quickly through what Crow Lee had done and handed over the remote control and the Merlin Glass. The Armourer gave the remote a quick look and then handed it off to a hovering lab assistant, who hurried off with it. The Armourer scowled thoughtfully. “There’s a lot of useful information to be found in that thing, no doubt, but this…Eddie, this isn’t the Merlin Glass I gave you. I know that for a fact, because the original Merlin Glass is still lying on a bench up there in the Armoury, cracked from top to bottom and waiting for me to do something about it. This…is a whole new Merlin Glass. Where did you get it?”

“It’s from another Drood Hall, from another reality. Long story you really don’t need to know for now. But this Glass can do anything the old one can, and then some. It should be able to point the way home for Alpha Red Alpha. It’s very eager to please.”

“Not necessarily a good thing, with anything made by Merlin Satanspawn,” sniffed the Armourer. “But never look a gift whore in the mouth.”

“Language, Jack!” said the Regent.

“Sorry, Dad,” said the Armourer. “But you’re right, Eddie. Let me work on the Glass. If you and the rest of the family can just keep the monsters at bay for a little while longer…till I can get this heap of junk working…Yes, I’m talking about you, you oversized egg timer! Don’t think I don’t know you’re listening!”

We left him to it and went back up into the Hall. Which might have
been under attack by an army of nightmarish monsters, but was still less disturbing than the cavern below.

Back in the main hallway, we all crowded together in the open front doors, looking out into the clearing. The monsters were pressing closer than ever to the Hall. The shimmering barrier that contained the Earth-normal conditions had been forced back right across the clearing and was now only a few yards away. The creatures seemed bigger and madder and more determined than ever, rising to fill the sky with huge slabs of angry shapes. The armoured Droods defending the perimeter had been pushed back, too, till they were only just outside the Hall. They were hitting the monsters with everything they had, but even the combined clamour of all their weapons was nothing compared to the howls and screams and roars of the massed monsters.

“According to some short-range scanners the Armourer rigged up for me,” the Sarjeant-at-Arms said tightly, “these creatures give off dangerous radiations and toxic emissions. As if they weren’t ugly enough already. Together, just their presence is enough to overwhelm our poor Earth-normal conditions. The monsters have been pushing the barrier hard, and it can’t stand against them much longer. Soon enough the clearing will be full of those monsters, and we’ll have to fight from inside the Hall.”

“Could they push the barrier back inside the Hall?” I said. “Push their world’s conditions in here with us?”

“I don’t know,” said the Sarjeant. “The Hall has all kinds of protections, but most of them don’t seem to work here. As though we’re so far from our own reality that even the laws of physics are different.”

“Where are the Librarian and Ammonia Vom Acht?” I said.

“Planning some kind of psychic attack,” said the Sarjeant-at-Arms, making clear what he thought of that idea with a very expressive upraised eyebrow. “It’s a sign of how desperate our situation is that I’ve encouraged them to try. It keeps them out of the way.…”

“Just how desperate is this situation?” said Molly, peering out the door while tapping one finger idly against her silver torc.

“We’ve had to ground all our air forces,” said the Sarjeant. “The skies were getting too crowded. All that’s protecting us from death from above are the gun emplacements on the roof. And just like everyone else, they’re running out of ammunition. It’s been centuries since we had to withstand a siege; we’re just not prepared. A lesson for the Future, if there is a Future. Any idea how long it’ll be before the Armourer can fire up Alpha Red Alpha and get us out of this hellhole?”

“He didn’t say,” I said.

“Of course he didn’t. He never does.”

Pushed back by the monsters, their backs set against the front of the Hall, golden-armoured figures stood side by side, firing every kind of gun I’d ever seen. Doing remarkable amounts of damage to the walls of flesh before them, but not enough to stop or even slow them. Vicious steaming fluids fell down to splash across the golden armour, only to fall harmlessly away. The stench drifting in through the doorway was unbelievably vile. I wondered if I should raise the question of the Armageddon Codex with the Sarjeant-at-Arms. He’d noticed I was carrying Oath Breaker, but he hadn’t said anything. I wasn’t looking forward to explaining to him just who had taken the ironwood staff in the first place.

He didn’t need to know about the Original Traitor for now.

And then we all jumped and cried out as the shimmering screen slammed back several feet to right inside the hallway. We all fell back from the open doors as harsh air and heavy gravity filled the doorway. The Sarjeant yelled for all the Droods on the perimeter to get back inside, and they lowered their weapons and ran for it. Many of them threw themselves through the open windows, rather than get caught in the crush at the doors. Patrick and Diana each got a chair to stand on and calmly laid down covering fire over the Droods’ heads to discourage the advancing monsters. I looked across at the Regent, who just shook his head sadly.

“Sorry, Eddie. Lateral thinking and tricks of the trade are fine against my usual enemies, but this is all a bit beyond me.”

“Ethel?” I said.

“Yes, Eddie,” the disembodied voice said immediately. “I’m right here.”

“The elderly gentleman here is my grandfather Arthur. I say he is a Drood in good standing once more, so please be so kind as to grant him his armour again.”

“Of course, Eddie. What about the other two?”

I paused. “What do you mean, what about the other two? You mean Patrick and Diana? What about them?”

“Well, they’re both Droods, too. Do you want me to give them armour, as well?”

I looked at the Regent and then at Patrick and Diana. And just like that, I knew who they were. Who they had to be. And why they’d always seemed so familiar. Age had made a big difference. They didn’t look anything like they used to in the only old photo I’d had of them. Hell, Patrick was bald with a beard now, and that’ll disguise anyone. Diana’s hair was grey.…They’d both changed so much, but even so, deep down I’d recognised both of them the moment I saw them. It had just taken till now, this moment, for me to see them clearly and admit to myself who they really were.

“Mum?” I said. “Dad?”

Emily and Charles Drood smiled at me. The Regent stood between them and put his arms across their shoulders.

“My children…” he said. “Don’t blame them, Eddie. They wanted to explain everything the moment you walked into Uncanny. I persuaded them not to. Because you already had so much on your plate…But they still insisted on meeting you and working alongside you.”

I put up a hand, to stop his talking. “All right,” I said. “I get it. But there will be a hell of a lot of questions afterwards.”

“Yes,” said Charles. “We’ll tell you everything. Afterwards.”

“There is quite a lot of it to tell,” said Emily.

“You abandoned me,” I said. I hadn’t meant for it to come out that harshly, but I couldn’t hold it back. “How could you leave me here?”

“We didn’t want to!” said Emily.

“We had no choice,” said Charles.

“You see?” said the Regent. “This is why I didn’t want you to know yet! We can’t do this now, Eddie. We have to concentrate on the matter at hand.”

The front doors exploded inwards as a massive monster’s head slammed right through them. A great battering ram of a head more than twenty feet across and half as high, it forced its great bulk into the hallway after us as we scrambled to fall back. Long jaws slammed together in their eagerness to get at us. Charles and Emily opened fire on it, blasting great chunks of its face away, but it just roared deafeningly and pushed more of itself into the hallway, expanding the opening it had made in the doors with brute force. Molly armoured up and punched the head with as much force as the armour could deliver, but still she could only damage it, not hurt it. I yelled for everyone to fall back, and advanced on the snapping head with the ironwood staff in my hand. Huge dark eyes followed me, and the jaws gaped open. I hit the head a mighty blow with Oath Breaker, and the whole head exploded. The force of the blast threw bloody fragments the whole length of the hall and back out the doorway, and in a moment the entire space was empty again. Dark blood and other fluids coated the walls and dripped down from the ceiling, along with misshapen gobbets of flesh.

I was just lowering Oath Breaker and starting to relax when a long snakelike head shot through the gap where the doors had been, grabbed me in its jaws and hauled me out into the alien world. I armoured up instinctively, so the heavy teeth just ground uselessly against me, but I was still held firmly as the great snake head hauled me high up into the air and waved me back and forth. The world spun dizzyingly around me. I jabbed at the front of the snake’s head with Oath Breaker, and all its front teeth shattered and blew apart. The huge alien creature screamed deafeningly, spraying dark blood by the gallon, but it released some of its hold on me. I punched holes into the scaled flesh of the upper jaw with both my armoured fists, and then used the precarious handholds to pull myself out of the mouth and up onto the top of its head. I stamped my golden feet into the head to anchor myself.

I could see the Hall a long way below, surrounded by all the many monsters that dwarfed it. The huge snake head swayed viciously back and forth, spraying blood everywhere, and screaming so deafeningly I could barely stand it, even inside my armour. I balanced myself as best I could, raised Oath Breaker with both hands and brought it down on the back of the creature’s neck, where the head met the body. Scaled flesh exploded and the whole great body went limp. I rode the dying snake all the way down to the ground, and my armoured legs soaked up the massive impact as the head smashed into the ground. I jumped down and ran for the open doorway.

Molly came out to meet me in her armour. She stopped abruptly, blocking my way into the Hall. I stopped. I knew what was wrong. It was Molly’s armour, all right; the familiar tarnished gold with the feminine attributes…but it hadn’t walked like Molly, moved like Molly.

“What are you doing?” I said to the armour. To Moxton’s Mistake. “Why have you overridden Molly’s control?”

“You’re planning on going home,” said the rogue armour in its grating, too-human voice. “I’m not. I like it here. I think I could have fun here. Our bargain is over. No more service; I’ll take my freedom here. And you’re not going to stop me, Eddie. Because I have Molly Metcalf inside me. Trapped.”

“What do you want?” I said.

“I’m going to stand back and watch the monsters tear the Hall apart, and then drag you out and eat you,” said the rogue armour. “A fitting retribution for all the years you left me trapped in the Maze. Maybe I’ll even help the monsters. Smash Alpha Red Alpha…And you won’t lift a finger to stop me, Eddie, or I’ll crush your precious Molly into a cube, like I did before. Only slower, so I can enjoy it more…”