airship, this one of a more familiar design, lay in fragments, its ribs rising out of the earth like the burnt bones of a titan.
The air was thick with the choking reek of ash and burning Cuttleflesh. The Cuttlefolk had been beaten here and decisively. What kind of weaponry did the Underground possess that could so blithely defeat such an army?
“Something new.” Agatha mused. “And something powerful. At least we don’t need to warn our colleagues in the mountains about the Cuttlefolk. Let us hope they know we’re coming. I would hate to think of them deciding we were the enemy.”
She called to her troops to raise all the white flags they could and to lower the train’s guns.
“Better to look unthreatening,” she said. Medicine agreed with her, though he couldn’t imagine the Grendel being anything else.
Medicine wasn’t sure what the people of the Underground thought about their fast approaching train, but they did not fire upon it as they crossed those last few miles. Regardless, tension built amongst all those aboard it.
The Grendel reached the end of the line, stopping at a heavy set of gates before which were signs of further struggle, craters and a pile of Cuttlemen dead, though nothing to rival the destruction to the south. The gates opened slowly to admit the train. Ice-cold water washed over them, the train chilled. For the moths, Medicine thought. How long has this been going on?
The Grendel pulled at last into the Underground, tracks running all the way into the compound, buried in the mountain. And there was the Yawn, waiting on a parallel line. The mystery of the missing train solved, though another mystery had replaced it. Why hadn’t Stade known of its whereabouts?
They piled off the train and were met by hundreds of armed guards.
The place is a fortress, Medicine thought. He saw no salvation for humanity here. Just war. Men and women, armed with odd weaponry, lined the walls that bounded the caverns proper. Huge cannon too guarded the wall and two tall structures of dull iron and gleaming glass that looked like crooked necked lanterns.
Perhaps to light the underground at night, he thought.
Medicine walked warily at the fore with Agatha.
A man met them at the platform. “Welcome,” he said. “My name is Grappel, we were expecting you.” He gestured at the Grendel. “Though not for some days, and certainly not aboard this. You’ve proven yourself… resourceful.”
Agatha frowned. “I do not know you,” she said. “Where is Sam?”
“There has been some restructuring,” Grappel said. “After we restored contact with Mirrlees, Sam Asquin was moved to another area. It seemed he was a little slow in reacting to the problems we have been having in completing work on time.” Grappel smiled. “The addition of your thousands will aid us considerably.”
“We were going to warn you of the Cuttlefolk,” Agatha said. “But it looks as though you didn’t need it.”
Grappel laughed. “We dealt with them quite efficiently, wouldn’t you agree?”
“You did,” Medicine said. “But how?”
“New technology. While Mirrlees rots, we have been nothing but industrious here. The cannon above are coolant launchers, but those lanterns are prototypes, they launch nothing more than light, expressed as heat energy, though in an extremely concentrated form. I doubt it would do much against the Roil in the long term: the spores would find the heat quite invigorating, but the Cuttlefolk, they’re a different prospect altogether.”
“It was a massacre,” Agatha said.
Grappel bowed. “And one that we engineered as a warning. The Cuttlefolk will think twice before they attack the Underground again. The last bastion of humanity cannot be threatened before it is even completed. Now, please come in. You all must be very tired, and Councillor Aidan would meet with you tonight.”
Agatha glanced over at Medicine. She didn’t look happy, but it was her job to be concerned with such things.
Grappel sighed. “Now, we can all stand here chatting till the Roil comes or we can take you into the shelter of the Underground and you can have the rest which every one of you deserves after all those miles. I know which I’d prefer. First though, you will need to be checked for infection. Please, empty the train and take the first few steps into your new home.”
Agatha signalled to her troops and they disembarked. Once they were gathered outside the train and heads counted Agatha turned to Grappel. “All are accounted for. Now do what needs to be done, I would communicate with the Mayor.”
Grappel shook his head, and raised his hands towards the wall. The guns mounted there had turned upon them. Grappel bowed deeply and ironically. “Welcome again to the Underground, ladies and gentlemen. A new territory of the Free State of Hardacre.”
Medicine looked to Agatha, he didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Stade had lost before he had even begun. Agatha’s face was without expression, though Medicine could see the fear and anger bound deep within her eyes and a bleak resolve. She grabbed the rifle from across her back.
“Find some cover,” she whispered at Medicine. He didn’t move.
“We can’t win this battle here,” he said. “We’ll be slaughtered.”
“I know.”
“And I, for one, have no wish to die.”
Agatha lowered her gaze. She reached for Medicine’s hand, squeezed it gently. “None of us do. But I have my duty, and it is to the city of Mirrlees and its people.”
“What of your duty to your soldiers?”
“Put down your weapons and you will be treated with respect,” Grappel said. “We’re not butchers, there is far too much work to be done to waste lives now.”
Agatha hesitated. Medicine watched her eyes flick from him to her soldiers, and the armed men on the wall. Her shoulders slumped and she dropped her rifle.
“Do as he says,” Agatha hissed at her troops. “We’ve not come all this way to die now.”
They were not quick about it, but there was no fight in their eyes. They were all too exhausted. The soldiers of Hardacre were much faster in their confiscation of the weapons.
This is not about loyalties, Medicine thought, but survival. He had learnt that lesson tied to a chair by Stade in Ruele Tower. He wondered if Stade could live by those rules. He thought of Stade’s arrival and the discovery that all he had laboured for was gone. Well, he’d created this mess, set it all in motion when he turned aside the refugees from the Grand Defeat.
There was a grim satisfaction to be found in that.
The Underground soldiery led away the workers to mess halls and people were simply pleased at the thought of real food (none of them had ever possessed any loyalty to Stade in the first place). Grappel took Medicine aside. Agatha made to follow and Grappel shook his head. “Not yet. You will need to be debriefed. Things are different here to what you are used to.”
Agatha nodded her head.
“See you soon,” Medicine said.
“Yes,” Agatha said, brushing his arm with her fingers. “Be careful.”
Medicine reached out and squeezed her hand. “The hard part’s over isn’t it? We made it here.”
Grappel gestured to Medicine to follow him. “The hard part’s only beginning, I’m afraid,” he said.
Grappel took him to a small room, built into the mountain near the tracks. He passed Medicine a flask. “You might want a bit of this.” Medicine noticed the administrator’s hands were shaking. He waved the flask away.
“Not now,” Medicine said.
Gunshots cracked, men howled, and more guns fired.
“What are you doing?” He demanded, but he already knew the answer.
Grappel raised his hands, his face pale. “I’m sorry,” he said. “It was an order.”
Medicine pushed his way past him, and back to the courtyard. The Council troops lay dead, Agatha with them. Medicine watched as they dragged the corpses away: the blood trailing them an accusation.
He dropped to his knees. “What have you done? You said you needed workers, everybody you could get.”
“Mr Paul, you of all people must understand,” Grappel said, as though speaking to a child. “We are at war.
