Horizons of Deceit, Book 1 Read online

  “Let’s take a look around,” whispered Nathaniel.

  They began to move along the curving corridor. Nathaniel’s eyes scanned each exhibit minutely, ever alert for something out of place. Tally would occasionally cup his hands against the glass to take a curious peek at the exotic beasts rustling around within, but more often than not was unable to see what was inside. Nathaniel frowned. As far as he could tell, everything seemed to be in order—this was just a normal zoo, made marginally spooky by the silence and the dark. Yet he couldn’t shake the keenness of his instincts, which told him that this must be where they needed to be.

  “There must be some sort of chamber behind this inner ring,” he muttered, aping Tally and cupping his fingers against the glass to see if there was a hatch on the back wall. A large bearded lizard blinked lazily back at him. “Some sort of access point, perhaps to feed the animals and clean the cages. Hello…what’s this?”

  After stepping back from the dragon’s gaze his eyes fell upon an exhibit distinctly different from the rest. It was set inside the inner wall, directly opposite and facing away from the door through which they had entered. He strode up to it purposefully, Tally close behind him.

  “Something caught your eye, Professor?”

  “Indeed, something has…”

  What had piqued Nathaniel’s interest was a free-standing exhibit that purported to show the flora and fauna of Mars. It looked as if it belonged more in a museum than a zoo—a crude diorama of the bleak Martian landscape, with two statues of Martians made from resin standing in its centre. The figures, Nathaniel noted, were rough and inaccurate, as if their sculptor had only the most basic sketches from which to craft their likeness. Seemingly based on the more civilised Canal Martians, their long, elfin features were out of proportion, with eyes that were far too wide and too many fingers on each hand. They were also incongruously dressed in a patchwork of skin and fur, more redolent of cavemen than the actual baroque styles the Canal Martians commonly wore.

  “Bit of a rum pair,” observed Tally.

  “Quite,” rejoined Nathaniel, “and they’re not the only thing that’s rum here….”

  Nathaniel quickly unhooked the maroon velvet rope that served as a barrier to curious hands and restless children, and carefully stepped around the resin figures to the back wall. A pale red Martian sky had been painted there, and Nathaniel started running his hands up and down the wall to gauge if there was some sort of break that could act as a doorway. He quickly found a crack and, tracing it with his fingers, discovered the distinct outline of a door. He tried pushing it, pulling it and even sliding it to one side—all to no avail.

  “There must be some sort of switch,” he said to Tally, exasperated. “Have a look around, see if you can see anything.”

  Tally got to work on the left of the scene while Nathaniel looked down to his right. Clearly, at this point, the model maker either knew something Nathaniel didn’t or was just letting his imagination run free, for he had built a couple of plants into the ground that resembled nothing Nathaniel had ever seen on Martian soil. They resembled a kind of thistle with a corkscrew-shaped stem from which vicious looking spikes emanated, each being about four inches long, the plants themselves a couple of feet high. These fantasy plants were a pale green colour, looked almost translucent, and were topped with a large black bloom like a sunflower. Nathaniel knelt down to examine them. The thorns, he noticed, were razor sharp.

  “Curious…,” he muttered, experimentally prodding and withdrawing his finger quickly. He looked at the base of the plant closest to him, and noticed something odd. Where the bottom of the stem curled into the ground there seemed to be some sort of recess, a break in the otherwise unbroken floor in the exact shape of a circle. It was totally unnoticeable unless you were looking, and was surrounded by a plethora of the angry-looking spikes.

  Careful so as not to pierce his skin, Nathaniel edged his hand inside the curling stem and pushed down firmly on the button.

  There was a loud clunk and the sound of groaning, and he looked up to see the outline of the door had swung backwards a fraction.

  “Bingo,” he breathed. He quickly extricated his hand and stood, and with Tally looking on he gave the door a gentle push. It eased open smoothly on well-oiled hinges. There was nothing but darkness beyond.

  “After you,” said Tally cheerfully. Nathaniel frowned at him.

  11.

  THEY FOUND A couple of lanterns in a cupboard on the wall just inside the door and, having lit them with a couple of matches provided by Tally, took in their surroundings. Nathaniel’s previous assumption had been correct—they were in a circular room at the centre of the ring. A spiral staircase built from wood jutted from the walls surrounding a dark, empty hole at the centre. There were no handrails, and the stairs creaked ominously as they began their descent down the well.

  Their journey was a long and careful one, each step tested carefully before Nathaniel, who was leading, would trust his weight to it. They were, he estimated, perhaps two hundred feet down before the stairs stopped at an unevenly-hewed stone floor. A tunnel roughly cut from the bare rock yawned before them.

  “Someone’s been busy,” remarked Nathaniel.

  “What is this?” asked Tally. “Some sort of mine?”

  “I’d guess so. The Russians do seem overly keen on digging, I’ve found. It’s either that or some sort of…escape route? But why?”

  “Only one way to find out,” said Tally. He gestured like a valet for Nathaniel to take the lead once more. Ducking his head, Nathaniel entered the tunnel. He had not gone far before the roof began to open out and a soft light from ahead allowed them to abandon their lanterns. They proceeded with the utmost caution, but the closer they got to the source of the light, the more apparent it became that this mine—or whatever it was—was deserted. There was no sound of any sort, not the thrum of machinery or the barked instructions of soldiers, which prompted Nathaniel to wonder why the lights had been left on….

  Shortly, the tunnel opened out into a larger cavern. Compared to some of the Russian cave systems and mining operations Nathaniel had seen on Luna, this one was decidedly modest. It was only a couple of hundred feet across and roughly dome-shaped, with a rough ledge carved around the circumference half-way up the wall. Wooden props and staircases were dotted around haphazardly, and the mouths of several lesser tunnels opened ominously into darkness on both levels. Hemp ropes and rusted pulleys hung from the ceiling, deathly still. It was the centre of the cave that proved the most intriguing. A mineshaft had been dug into the floor and, now convinced that whoever had dug it had absconded, Nathaniel jogged up to peer into the dark. He had expected the hole to yawn sickeningly into the depths, but found the shaft was not as deep as he had thought—he could easily see the ground, which was littered with abandoned chunks of machinery, pickaxes and cables that fed the spectral lights. A large tarpaulin sheet covered something in the centre of the pit, and was Nathaniel mistaken, or did he detect a faint green pulsing from underneath it…?

  “Whoever they were they must have known the location of what they were digging for to a high degree of accuracy. This is far more efficient than you’d expect….”

  “Well that’s just dandy,” said Tally. “Shame the same thing can’t be said about us. We’re no closer to knowing a damn thing.”

  “Not the point, Tally. Not the point. What’s important is that we’re finding out. Otherwise, what’s the point of being here?”

  “Exactly the question I was asking meself….”

  Nathaniel noticed a ladder leaned up against the lip of the pit. “Chin up, Tally!” he said, clapping the Irishman on the shoulder. “Onwards and downwards….”

  Relieved that the ladder was at least sturdily constructed, Nathaniel began his descent into the hole. Tally followed him down.

  After dusting himself off primly, Nathaniel surveyed the scene.

  “It looks like all the answers will be discovered under that tarpaulin
,” he noted, and strode across to the wax-covered cloth. It had been tied down firmly at the corners onto pegs that had been drilled into the floor, but there was enough give at the sides to allow Nathaniel a quick peek underneath. He had not been mistaken—he found himself looking at a sheer green wall, crystalline in nature and glowing faintly.

  “Remarkable! Tally, have you still got that penknife?”

  “No, I left it behind on account of its terrible weight. Of course I’ve bloody got it.”

  “Well then don’t be facetious and hand it here.”

  Tally did as he was instructed. Nathaniel scratched at the pale, translucent material, hoping to carve off a chunk—but the penknife barely made a scratch.

  “Whatever it is, it’s tough,” he remarked, before using the penknife to cut away at the rope that held one corner of the tarpaulin down. He quickly sawed through, and lifted up the corner to reveal a small section of the crystals more fully. They spiked and branched from a central root, looking almost organic in nature. Nathaniel gripped one of the outcroppings firmly, a hexagonal chunk roughly six inches long that tapered into a deadly-looking point. He gave it a yank, and felt it give; put all his weight against it and his shoe against the side before tugging with all his might. With a delicate snap, the piece came away in his hand and he fell backwards into the grit.

  “Laterally,” he said, as Tally helped him up, “it’s firm as a diamond, but it’s far more brittle on the horizontal plane. As if it’s composed of some sort of tubing….” His mind began to whirr with possibilities. “Here, Tally, help me undo the rest of these ropes. I need to get a good look at the formation as a whole.”

  Tally got to work unfastening the knot at the other corner with his fingers while Nathaniel cut away at another. They both finished their task simultaneously and, catching Tally’s eye and nodding, Nathaniel whipped the tarpaulin up and away with a whoosh of air. His heart fell when he saw what he had revealed.

  “Oh dear,” he muttered, swallowing loudly. “Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.”

  “I’m thinkin’ you weren’t expecting to find that,” noted Tally, his mouth dry.

  “If I’d had my wits about me, Tally, I’m afraid that’s exactly what I should have expected to find!”

  The crystal growth had been revealed in all its glory. The main trunk was about two feet high, from which smaller gems branched like fronds of lightning. The top of this trunk had been sheared away like a felled tree. Attached to this plateau was a device whose construction Nathaniel instantly recognised, even though previously he had only seen it in shards and blackened pieces.

  With a sinking feeling deep in his abdomen he realised how much bigger this version looked than the one he had examined in the bowels of the Admiralty….

  The mechanism and construction of the bomb were almost identical to how Nathaniel had imagined them, as he’d carefully pieced the machine together in his mind. The body was built up of copper, beautifully crafted with intricate fractal patterns and polished to a gleaming shine. A clockwork mechanism jutted from the main section, ticking ominously and surrounded with a glass dome, and Nathaniel felt almost breathless when confronted with the sheer ingenuity and elegant perfection of this device of death. He noted the steel tubing strapped to one side, calibrated, he deduced quickly, to prevent the housing from being moved even a fraction of an inch. Yet there was a distinct difference in this far more terrifying version…. Before, where a glass tube had held the crystalline powder, wires ran from the heart of the infernal contraption and were embedded solidly in the depths of the crystal’s root.

  “We need to get out of here,” said Nathaniel. “We need to get out of here as quickly as possible!” Any thoughts of immediate escape for Tally and Nathaniel were curtailed by a sound far more ominous than the soft ticking of the bomb. From the ledge above them came the sound of a slow hand clap, and a nasal voice in clipped, upper-class tones purred.

  “Well congratulations, Professor Stone. I knew you’d get there in the end.”

  Tally and Nathaniel’s gaze shot upwards. The pit was not so deep that they could not fully see an impish figure sitting with his legs dangling into the hole. He wore immaculate green tweed, a shallow-brimmed hat with a small brown feather in the band and was smoking a cigarette from a long ivory holder gripped tightly between his teeth. Next to him stood a giant of a man, perhaps seven feet tall and nearly half as wide, dressed in a huge, double-breasted greatcoat. He wore welding goggles over his eyes and a black bowler hat, and his hands…his hands were surrounded by a dull brass framework, their hinges and sprockets drilled into the very flesh itself.

  “Emphasis on the word end,” said the smaller man, grinning like Mephistopheles.

  Chapter Eight

  The Succubus of Black Town

  1.

  THE SHAMEFUL EXTENT of Fabrice Garrecreux’s depravity had been revealed. Vice-Chancellor Banerjee had recounted the scandalous tale in a slow monotone, with no inflection of emotion save a vague, weary sorrow. It was almost as if he were giving a lecture on a point of law in which he had no interest, or was discussing the dull minutiae of college finances.

  The tale went as follows: Garrecreux had been a nuisance from the very start. His research was ostensibly into cannabis sativa, a subspecies of hemp that produced a bud infused with a psychoactive crystalline compound. This, Banerjee explained, was a blight on the lower castes who would inhale its vapours to induce an indolent, carefree haze that blunted the realities of their otherwise dismal existence. Garrecreux had procured two dozen hessian sacks of the stuff and had stunk out the geology department for six weeks afterwards. He became less and less dependable in his teaching duties, often missing his scheduled lectures for days on end in order to concentrate on his research into the plant. He attempted, utterly unsuccessfully, to synthesise the active compound and grow larger and larger crystals, analysing its properties and, so it was rumoured, becoming more and more addicted to the thrall of the weed’s euphoric effects.

  Much as in Arnaud’s time, Garrecreux had become a figure of ridicule in the university, among the faculty as a whole and, in particular, the students—with the single exception of a young Bengali graduate by the name of Esme Moonsinge. She came from a wealthy family and, to all intents and purposes, seemed an introverted, brooding girl with a fierce intelligence and a terrible temper. On account of her privileged stock she insisted she be called Madame Moonsinge by peers and professors alike, and when a classmate humiliated her in the common room on account of her close association with Garrecreux, the unfortunate boy was found the following morning with his face slashed open by a knife. The boy lost an eye, and yet nothing could be proved—such things happened when the young wandered Black Town at night. Yet the whole thing reeked of suspicion.

  If this wasn’t troubling enough, further distressing reports began to reach Vice-Chancellor Banerjee’s desk. Garrecreux and Moonsinge would lock themselves away in labs to which they (strictly speaking) were not allowed access. They were seen together outside the Campus, often frequenting the riskier corners of Black Town’s most notorious slums. When working in the Campus they would cause fires, small explosions and outbreaks of noxious, headache-inducing gasses. Disciplinary procedures were already well underway before talk came of a disturbing shift in the nature of their relationship—Madame Moonsinge had ceased to be the student and had become the mistress, in every sense of the word. Garrecreux, it was said, was now nothing more than a simpering lapdog, so besotted with the young, tempestuous beauty he would wear dark glasses all hours of the day to counter, it was said, the brightness of her radiant countenance.

  There was nothing more the vice-chancellor could offer, he admitted with a sigh. He wanted nothing more than to wash his hands of the whole affair and concentrate on encouraging students and teachers who would bring acclaim and recognition to the fine institution he was tasked with running, as opposed to ruin and ridicule.

  “Where do you think we can find them?” asked Arnau
d, as Coyne—for the hundredth time—inspected the cleanliness of his nails.

  “I can direct you to some of the areas of Black Town where they’ve been seen. It’s not a course of investigation I would recommend, however. Black Town is a dangerous place, Doctor Fontaine, and not one for tourists or outsiders. Even the Queen’s Regiments despise being posted there. Yet I can see your resolution is firm, and your mission of no little importance, so allow me to offer a guide, a trusted friend of mine, and a driver to take…”

  “That won’t be necessary,” interjected Coyne, idly. “I’m all the protection he needs.”

  When the vice-chancellor led them to the door of his office, he shook Arnaud’s hand firmly and, his eyes sharp, instructed the young Frenchman to watch his back at all times, and to always carry a loaded pistol.

  2.

  SOVEREIGN WAS HOVERING forty feet above the windswept tundra, a blinding and barren sheet assailed by ghostly wisps of snow made living by the wind. Hardy trees as cold as stone stood sentinel hundreds of feet apart, forlorn for lack of warmth or company. Crops of rock would occasionally peek above the ice, the colour of gunmetal and the only hint of the true nature of the terrain below. They were several miles west of the Russian base at Severnaya, and while the blizzard’s white-out offered them almost perfect concealment, the great airship did not dare venture any closer. Folkard, Enderby and four hand-picked men from the Secret Service Bureau would be continuing on foot.

  A cutter was deemed too risky in these conditions, and so weighted rope ladders were thrown down from the sides of Sovereign. Instantly the wind hit them, buffeting them wildly and making the ends whiplash around like a viper in the throes of death.