The corridor opened out into a larger chamber, bigger than the foyer, with two balconied galleries running along either side. Along the length of the chamber were twelve containers in three rows of four. They were white ceramic boxes inside cradles of some metal that looked like polished brass. Each was a little over two metres in length and half as wide.
There was an eerie feel to the chamber. Time had been less kind to it than the foyer. There was rubble on the floor and grass had taken root in the corners. Dust lay thick all around. Though there was the same soft light here as elsewhere, it only seemed to emphasise the desolation and emptiness.
And those boxes looked unsettlingly like tombs.
Ugrik and Frey seemed to feel none of his unease, however. They headed for the far end of the room, where there was a curving stairway that seemed to have melted out of the wall, leading up to one of the galleries. Crake followed more slowly. There was something out of place here, something he couldn’t put his finger on.
The boxes had an internal glow all their own. He studied them as he walked between them. Their walls were thin, and he could see the faintest of shadows through them. As if something was inside.
Then he realised what had been nagging at him, and he stopped still.
‘Crake?’ Frey called. ‘Can you stop dragging your arse, please?’
Crake ignored him. He put his hands on top of one of the boxes, feeling around for a seam.
‘Oi! What are you fiddling with?’
‘There’s no dust on ’em, Cap’n.’
‘What?’
‘These boxes. There’s dust everywhere else, but not here.’
‘So?’
He found what he was looking for, and hauled. ‘Well, Cap’n,’ he said. ‘Who’s been dusting them?’
The top of the box came open. It rose up and slid to one side and tilted out of the way with a silent mechanical movement. Frey looked inside. His eyes widened.
‘What is it, Crake?’ Frey called, seeing the expression on his face.
‘Spit and blood,’ he said. ‘There are still people in these things!’
The ceramic walls of the power station had resisted nature’s best efforts to destroy them for thousands of years. It took Ashua less than a second to do the job with a dump truck.
Bullets pinged off the metal skin of the massive vehicle as she climbed dizzily out of the cab. Her neck and back were numb from the whiplash. Fallen rubble had crashed down onto the truck’s mangled muzzle and shattered the windscreen. She heard the others returning fire on the Sammies from the shelter of the dump box behind her.
They were in. That was the important thing. They were in.
The Sammies had been slow to react to the sight of a dump truck clumsily thundering through the streets. Even when it went rolling up the ramps between the platforms that led up to the power station, they hadn’t suspected the hand of foreigners. Maybe they were too confident in the belief that this place couldn’t be found. Either way, she’d made it to the second platform before anyone thought to shoot at them. But her passengers were hidden and protected, and Ashua was a hard target inside the cab, so she kept on going.
It was only when they got to the top that she realised their predicament. There were twenty Sammies up there, maybe thirty, that they hadn’t been able to see from below. They had a machine gun, and they were forewarned.
It seemed the guarding of the power station was a serious matter, even when they thought the city couldn’t be found. Getting out and knocking on the door wasn’t going to be an option.
But the monster vehicle she was driving was the height of three men and weighed several dozen tonnes. Its wheels alone were three metres high: there were railed stairs on the front of it just so you could get to the cab. The cab itself was set back from the muzzle, well protected, and overhung by the dump box. And she reckoned the wall of the power station couldn’t be that thick.
The sheer strength of the vehicle made her feel invincible. So she put her foot down, and strapped herself in.
With their black skin, black hair and black uniforms, the Sammies looked like shadows made flesh. They certainly melted away like shadows when they saw the dump truck lumbering towards them. The machine gun punched bullets across the body of the vehicle, but the tiny?but the cab was sheltered by the enormous engine casing in the front. She yelled out a warning to the others in the back, but she wasn’t sure if they heard it over the bellow of the vehicle.
She braked just before they hit the power station, warned by an instinct for self-preservation. Her instincts were good. The jolt of impact wasn’t violent enough to send her flying into the dash, but it was hard enough to crack the thin Azryx ceramic. Instead of ploughing hard into the building, the dump truck only shoved its muzzle through the outer wall, then coughed to a stop.
When she got out, everyone was shouting. She blinked dust from her eyes and looked back along the flank of the vehicle. The machine gun emplacement was getting smashed to pieces by Grudge’s autocannon. Samandra Bree slipped lightly down the side of the truck, dropping onto one of the wheels and then to the ground. She swung out her shotguns and started blasting as the Sammie guards came running at them from the side.
Ashua couldn’t help taking a moment to marvel. There was something magnetic about the sight of a Century Knight in action. This wasn’t the scrappy, hectic gunfighting she’d seen on the street, or the sterile, regimented form of the soldier. Nothing was random, and everything was fluid. Samandra was always moving, but she always knew where she was moving to. There was a lever-action shotgun in each hand. Between each shot, she spun the shotgun fast as an eyeblink, chambering a new round as she did so. Every time she pulled the trigger, Sammies at impossible range went down.
These were the Century Knights she’d heard so much about, the heroes she’d idolised as a child. These were the men and women who let nothing stand in their way.
‘Get inside! We’ll take care o’ these fellers!’ Samandra called over the booming of Grudge’s autocannon. The others were already clambering over the front of the dump truck, picking their way through the rubble and down the smashed front steps into the power station. Ashua joined them.
She found herself in a cavernous corridor. It was lit by some unknown source, but the faded hue of the walls was dark and vaguely menacing. A thin ridge followed the curve of the ceiling like a spine, and exquisitely fashioned ribs ran its length. There were small signs of decay, cracks in places and bits broken off here and there, but it still retained a louring grandeur.
Oh, Maddeus, she thought. Gloomy and elegant. You’d have loved this place.
Bess leaped off the muzzle of the dump truck and crashed to the ground in front of her, making her jump. Malvery slapped her on the back.
‘No time for daydreaming, eh?’ he said cheerily.
‘It’s alright for you,’ she said, rolling her neck. ‘You were in the back of the truck.’
‘Ah, you’re a tough little thing. You’ll live, ll livquo; he said, and then strode off to help Pinn, who was struggling his way down the front of the vehicle with only one working arm.
She’d have thought it condescending from anyone but Malvery. But she didn’t like to be snappy when the doctor was around. In fact, his bluff, comradely manner made her feel quite good about herself. He inspired an unfamiliar emotion in her. Trust. He just seemed, well.. . decent, somehow. And Ashua couldn’t remember that last time she’d thought that about anyone. Not even Maddeus.
A smile touched the corner of her mouth. Maybe Maddeus had the right idea after all, forcing her in with this lot. Maybe he’d been looking for someone to hand her off to for a long time, ever since he knew he was dying. She wondered how much he’d already known about the crew of the Ketty Jay when she came to him with the news that they were working together. She wondered, in fact, who had started the chain of whispers that led Frey to her in the first place.