A woman knelt by the device, lost in contemplation. She started gently probing it with some hand-held device. He just hoped she was an expert who knew what she was doing.
She spared Kendrick's arrival the briefest glance before leaning over until the side of her head touched the floor, peering into the narrow space between the nuke itself and the wall against which it was placed.
Sabak spoke to her. 'Shirl, is that definitely what he says? No chance it's a decoy or something else altogether?'
She shook her head without even looking at them. 'It's the real deal: a field nuke – backpack tactical weapon. Normally used for high-yield radiation effect, but still powerful enough to blow at least a hole in the hull.' She paused, as if in contemplation. 'No, make that rip the place to shit.'
'Okay, then, can you disarm it?'
'Most of these wires have nothing to do with the nuke itself,' Shirl explained. 'It's all to do with booby-trapping. If we so much as move this thing from where it's currently sitting, there's no guarantee it isn't just going to blow immediately.' She shook her head. 'We need somebody who knows more about these things than I do. I'm out of my depth.'
'Is it on any kind of timer?' Sabak demanded.
She shook her head. 'Timer's not working. I think maybe they were about to set it, but then…' She shuddered. 'Something happened. You saw those other people back there?'
Shirl stood up, wiping dusty hands on her suit. 'These things always come with some kind of a remote detonator, a back-up in case the timer fails or you want to blow it ahead of schedule, or at a safe distance. Something hand-held – like, stick a nuke under a dam or someone's presidential palace, drive a long way off, then hit the button.'
Sabak started. 'You mean there might still be some kind of trigger round here somewhere?'
Leigh's face sprang into Kendrick's mind. He remembered Buddy telling him that she ranked pretty high in Los Muertos. If anyone had been in charge of their expedition here, it might well have been her. So, perhaps any such trigger would be on or near her body…?
Of course, Sabak wasn't necessarily aware of this. 'We're going to have to search all these corpses,' Sabak was even then saying with obvious distaste. 'And carefully.'
'Just listen to me,' Kendrick insisted. Sabak gave him an annoyed glance. 'Draeger is around here somewhere, and I'll bet you anything he's looking for that detonator, if he hasn't found it already.'
'Bullshit,' Sabak sneered. 'Los Muertos is one thing, but Draeger doesn't have any reason to blow up the Archimedes. He'd be killing himself along with the rest of us.'
The sound of screaming resumed, sounding closer now. Sabak stepped away, listening, his face suddenly pale.
'Keep a hold on him.' Sabak nodded towards Kendrick. 'And bring him along. Shirl, keep working on that thing and let me know if you can figure anything out. Just… be seriously fucking careful.'
'Really? I thought maybe I'd just cut the blue wire and see what happened,' she deadpanned.
Kendrick's two guards pushed him along immediately behind Sabak as they made their way towards the source of the screaming. The sound, an unending ululation like nothing he had ever heard, raised the hairs on the back of Kendrick's neck. He wondered how anyone could have the physical ability to scream so consistently, and for so long.
They turned a corner and found two more of Sabak's men waiting by an open doorway, their weapons at the ready. Kendrick couldn't yet see what lay beyond.
'They're in there,' said one of the men. Kendrick could see how frightened he was. He felt a sudden tightening in his own chest, and didn't want to see what was in there.
As Sabak stepped forward the screaming stopped, to be replaced by a fit of coughing, then by the sound of someone gasping for breath.
Sabak stood for a long time at the doorway, staring at whatever lay beyond,
'Sabak.' No response. 'Sabak,' Kendrick called to him again.
The man finally turned to look at him. 'Bring him forward,' he ordered, almost under his breath.
Beyond the doorway lay an area that had clearly once served as a canteen. Plastic chairs and tables had long ago been neatly stacked in a corner.
In the empty centre of the room two of Draeger's men were in the gruesome process of killing themselves. One had torn off his spacesuit and was gouging deep gashes in his bare chest with a knife. His shirt hung around his waist in tatters. He appeared unaware of his audience.
The other, however, untwisted himself from the foetus position he had assumed, staring back at Kendrick and Sabak. Then, as they watched, he crouched down on all fours and proceeded to slam his forehead repeatedly and violently against the gore-sticky tiled floor in an apparent attempt to bash his own brains out.
Kendrick saw the bodies of two other of Draeger's soldiers lying nearby, in the shadows. They looked like they'd been shot at point-blank range.
'Listen to me,' Kendrick said. 'Robert is doing this, do you understand me?'
Sabak shook his head violently. 'No, the Bright are -they're just protecting themselves.'
'Protecting themselves? Whatever the Bright may be, in essence they're just machines. And machines don't go out of their way to play sadistic games like that.' Kendrick could see the uncertainty in Sabak's eyes. 'Your mind's been twisted so that you can't see the truth any more.'
The soldier smashing his head against the tiles finally slumped over and lay still. His companion sat exhausted, watching his own blood spread across the canteen floor in a widening pool.
'Look,' said Kendrick. 'Do you see that?'
Sabak stared, mute, as more of the winged shapes emerged from the shadows. They darted here and there, their tiny mouths opening in a piercing ululation that sent spasms of pain shooting into the back of Kendrick's skull.
Suddenly Sabak's henchmen weren't paying so much attention to their prisoner.
'Is this what you came here for, Sabak? Do you think they're going to lead you into Heaven?'
'Just shut up,' Sabak snapped back at him.
The ear-splitting wails emerged again from the creatures' throats. Now it felt as though someone had opened up Kendrick's skull and was tossing burning coals inside. He felt the grip on his arms loosen and instantly took the opportunity to pull himself free and run for the shadows and the outline of a door there. Tiny shapes darted at him as he reached it and something soft brushed against his face, feeling like dry cotton sheets. He heard a faint whispering, the kind of sound young children might make when hiding from a playmate in the dark.
Automatic fire thundered behind Kendrick as he pushed through the door and out into a connecting corridor. Angry voices reverberated behind him as he stumbled down a steep stairwell.
When he'd first entered the facility he'd been at ground level. If he was now descending, then he was penetrating the very hull of the Archimedes. Even so, there might be quite a few floors to negotiate before he reached the hull's exterior.
At the bottom of the steps Kendrick found a vast room filled with row upon row of gleaming metal cabinets. He ran on past them to find a stairwell that took him even deeper. He could hear voices clamouring somewhere behind him. He kept going.
Smeby came howling out of nowhere.
Kendrick yelled in surprise as a blade slashed through the air towards his cheek and Smeby slammed into him with his full weight.
Kendrick almost faltered when he saw the other man's face. Smeby had sliced lines into his cheek and brow, turning his features into a demon's mask.
'It's you!' he screamed into Kendrick's face. Then he backed away, tears running down his cheeks, before folding up, his trembling hands pressed against the sides of his head. A high keening noise poured from his lips.
Kendrick's gaze flicked to the doorway from which Smeby had emerged. Dozens of the winged homunculi fluttered in the shadows beyond it.
Now they came spilling through to surround both men, once more filling the air with their howling. Kendrick screamed too, gripping his head as they surrounded him in a vast, flapping storm. His skull was filled with unimaginable pain as incipient madness bubbled up somewhere deep inside his mind.
