lot you can do in the world. Though getting your hands on some really big guns probably wouldn t hurt, either. Is there any chance you could get us into the family Armoury? See if anything useful got left behind?
Of course, I said. Large parts of the Hall have always been underground. And heavily shielded and protected. If only to protect the rest of the family from what they did down there. The attackers might not have known about the underground installations or how to access them. Maybe they survived intact.
And maybe there are survivors down there, said Molly.
You ve always been such an optimist, I said. One of the things I ve always admired most about you.
So we went down.
I started with the War Room. It lay underneath the North Wing, or what was left of it. Access was only possible through a heavily reinforced steel door. I found the door easily enough underneath the shattered ground floor. The door was still intact, but it was standing partly open. The facial-recognition computers and retina-scan mechanisms had all been smashed. Very thoroughly. Not a good sign. I eased through the gap between the steel door and its frame and started down the very basic stairway beyond, carved out of the right-hand wall itself. Molly stuck close behind me. There was no railing, and only a intimidatingly deep and dark drop on the other side. Most of the overhead electric lights weren t working, and those that did flickered unreliably.
Molly and I descended the steep stairway, pressing our shoulders against the stone wall to keep us away from the long drop. Getting to the War Room wasn t meant to be easy. I wasn t sensing any of the usual force shields and magical screens that should have protected the area from unwanted visitors. Usually they felt like static crawling all over my skin, like unseen eyes watching your back with bad intent. I felt nothing, nothing at all. I looked briefly out over the long drop, and nothing looked back.
There was no sign of any of the goblins who usually stood watch over the stairway, peering out from their comfortable niches in the stone wall. All their little caverns were empty, with not a trace remaining to show they d ever been inhabited. No bodies. No sign of any struggle. But as we went down into the dark, spatters of dried blood began to appear on the steps below us. And all over the stone wall. By the time we got to the bottom, dried blood was splashed everywhere.
At the entrance to the War Room, the electric hand scanners had been torn out and smashed, the pieces and fragments lying scattered all over the floor. And the entire entrance door was just gone. I made Molly stand back while I stepped cautiously into the War Room. There was supposed to be a real live gorgon sitting just inside the door, doing penance for a very old crime against the family, ready to do something nasty and petrifying to anybody who dared enter the War Room without permission but there was no trace of the gorgon anywhere. Just a few scattered stone pieces on the floor that might have been a shattered human statue or two. I gave Molly the all clear, and she shot straight past me into the War Room, glaring fiercely about her. She hates being left out of things.
The War Room was a vast auditorium carved out of the solid bedrock underneath the Hall. All four walls were covered with massive state-of-the-art display screens showing every country in the world. But whereas normally they would have been covered with different-coloured lights showing what was happening in the world and what we were doing about it, now the screens were dead and blank and silent. The whole system was down.
I followed Molly into the War Room, looking dazedly about me while she darted from one workstation to the next, looking for something she could use. The whole room was empty, deserted, silent; the computers had all been broken open and torn apart. The scrying spheres had been smashed and cracked, all the tables and chairs had been overturned and everything useful or important had been very thoroughly trashed. There were no bullet holes here, no signs of energy-weapon fire, but there was a hell of a lot of blood splashed over everything and pooled on the bare stone floor.
A lot of people had died down here, but there wasn t a single body to be seen anywhere. Drood or otherwise.
Molly and I checked out the workstations methodically until we found one computer that was in somewhat better condition than the others. We couldn t get it working, so Molly just zapped the thing with some kind of spell to make it give up the last thing it had been working on. I ve never understood how she gets magic to work on scientific things, and I have enough sense not to ask. I m sure the answer would only upset me. The computer s last memory appeared on a cracked monitor screen. It showed Droods jumping up from their workstations, startled, as someone opened fire on them. Bodies were thrown this way and that, blasted right out of their workstations. Blood flew on the air and bodies crashed to the floor. There were shouts and screams. None of the Droods armoured up. There was just bloodshed and slaughter, and computer stations exploding as they were raked with gunfire. And then the computer shut down and the monitor went blank.
Molly called the last few images back to the monitor screen, goosing the thing with magical sparks when it tried to cut out on her.
Look at this, Eddie. According to what this screen is reluctantly showing us all the Hall s weapon systems and defences were off-line. Shut down before the attack. This has to be sabotage, Eddie; the work of the traitor inside the family. I m sorry; I know you don t want to hear this, but it s the only way this could have happened.
Callan was in charge here, I said. I didn t see him on the screen. I can t believe all the defence systems could have gone off-line at once without his noticing. Unless someone arranged for him to be distracted. Called away. So he wouldn t be here when this went down. I looked around the silent, deserted War Room. Still no bodies. You saw my family die on that screen. So why isn t there a single Drood body anywhere in this room?
Maybe they took your family away as prisoners, said Molly. Ethel was gone, so they didn t have their armour. Maybe your family just did the sensible thing and surrendered?
I suppose that s possible, I said. Droods stripped of their armour would have been in shock, especially after an attack like this. Some of them might have been captured.
So some of your family could still be alive somewhere! said Molly.
Why would our enemies want prisoners, if they hate us so much?
Don t be naive, sweetie. For information. Droods know things no one else does. Everyone knows that.
They could have got far more information from the computers, I said. And our enemies went out of their way to destroy them. No. The whole point of this was to destroy the Droods forever. To take us completely off the board.
You can hope, though, can t you?
We always say about the bad guys: If you don t have the body, they re probably not really dead. Maybe that works for the good guys, too. If there are any survivors, Molly, if there are any members of my family left alive anywhere I will find them.
We went back up and worked our way through the fallen Hall to what was left of the South Wing. To the Operations Room, a high-tech centre set up to oversee all the Hall s defences and protect the family from things like this. Once again the door was standing open, revealing a reasonably-sized room full of computer systems and workstations usually run by a cadre of specially trained technicians, under the head of ops, Howard. He wasn t there. Neither was anyone else. Everything in the room had been smashed to pieces with great thoroughness. Someone wanted to make sure that not one of these systems could ever be repaired or re-created. No way of telling whether anyone here had known the defences were off-line until it was far too late. There was a hell of a lot of blood, but no bodies.
I made my way carefully through the wreckage, looking for something to give me hope. Molly stuck close beside me, watching my back and comforting me with her presence. And at the very back of the room we found the little surprise the enemy had left for us, or for anyone else who came looking, to find. Twelve roughly severed heads set on spikes. Six male, six female. From the expressions on their faces, none of them had died well. Some were still silently screaming for help that never came. I studied the faces carefully but I didn t recognise any of them. I can t say whether that made it easier or harder to bear. I knelt down and closed the wildly staring eyes, one set at a time. Because I had to do something. There were no torcs at any of the raggedly cut necks.
The smell was pretty bad.
Did you know any of them? said Molly.
No, I said. But then, it s a big family. You can t know everyone. Howard isn t here.
Why leave the heads like this? said Molly.
As a warning to anyone who came looking? Or just to mark their territory, the bastards?
It s a sign of contempt, I said. To tell everyone that the Droods are nothing to be feared anymore. Well, they got that wrong. I m still here. I will find who did this. I will kill them all, and they will die hard and die bloody. And
