Outlanders 14 Hell Rising, page 1
Chapter 1
The North Atlantic
The staccato rap of knuckles on wood barely roused Aubrey Quayle from his meditations. The study of Plato in the original Greek required such concentration he almost entered an altered state, especially since his comprehension of the language was completely self- taught. To absorb the text, Quayle practiced a form of autohypnosis, regulating his breathing and employing a relaxation technique he had learned as a private in the Imperial Dragoons.
The knock sounded again, but he continued to stare at the open book, pendulous lips unconsciously forming the words imprinted on the page, translating them into English: "0 Solon, you Greeks are children. There have been and will be many destructions of mankind, of which the greatest are by fire and water."
Quayle couldn't argue with that bit of precognition, even had he cared to do so. The rap on his office door came a third time, louder and more insistent. Placing a blunt index finger on the sentence, he lifted his head. "Come."
The door opened and Corporal Jefferies stepped in, ducking his head both in deference and to keep his beret from being scraped off by the low frame. Snapping off a brisk salute, he announced, "It's time, Captain."
The corporal wore the dark red uniform of the dragoons, consisting of a hip-length leather jacket and beret canted at an angle on his close-cropped blond hair. The beret bore an insignia patch displaying a coiled, bat-winged serpent, blood-red, outlined against a black background. Mirrored sunglasses concealed his eyes. A Beretta M-92 autopistol hung in shoulder leather. The right side of his face bore a geometric design, a black rectangle superimposed over a small chevron.
"Thank you, Mr. Jefferies," Quayle replied. He poked around among the rolled charts and stacked volumes cluttering his desk and found a silver bookmark. Carefully, he closed the leather-bound book and levered himself upright by the arms of his chair. Wood creaked in protest.
Captain Aubrey Quayle towered a full head above the corporal. He wore a nearly identical uniform, except for shiny metal epaulets on the shoulders of the jacket. His massive belly strained the seams. He had always been a quartermaster's nightmare, even in his teens when the Imperium Britannia had first conscripted him into the dragoons.
His huge head, the size and shape of a pumpkin, rose between the broad yoke of his shoulders. It was completely hairless, both eyebrows and scalp a naked grotesquerie of dead white flesh and scar tracings. His left eye gleamed like a ruby, but his right was black, the iris a milky blue. A wealed, ridged mass of scar tissue surrounded the socket and creased across his heavy jowl, bisecting the two vertical bars tattooed into the flesh.
A pale slab of a hand removed his beret from a hook on the wall, and he took some time placing it just so on his bald pate. Jefferies respectfully stood aside in a parade-rest posture as Quayle swiftly inspected his reflection in a small mirror. Then he turned to squeeze his four-hundred-pound, six-foot-seven bulk through the doorway.
Followed by Jefferies, he lumbered down the passageway that connected the port and starboard quarters, the din of the four diesel engines filling his ears. The sealed hatch to the thyristor room vibrated with the deep hum of electric generators.
Quayle often felt that walking this stretch of corridor was akin to running a gauntlet of nerve-stinging noise. A stairwell pitched downward, the risers rust pitted and corroded in places to paper thinness. They squeaked and groaned beneath his booted feet.
The stairs ended at an open door, and Quayle pushed through it to the second-tier deck of the Northstar 40 drilling platform. He paused for a moment to inhale the sharp smell of the Atlantic Ocean, relishing the briny tang. Despite the sun blazing in the blue expanse of the sky, the temperature was still unseasonably cool. He didn't shiver from the chill wind gusting over the white-capped expanse of the sea, though he noticed Jefferies hunching his shoulders against its bite. Due to his mutagenically altered metabolism, he and his fellow dragoons were very sensitive to the cold. Then again, they didn't have Quayle's layers of fat to act as insulation.
He strode across the deck, glancing up at the flock of squawking gulls wheeling overhead. He briefly wondered how the carrion feeders knew in advance they would soon feast.
Seen from a distance, Northstar 40 rose from the ocean surface like an iceberg made of steel. The platform was 280 feet long and 212 feet wide, with three decks built around the skeletal drilling derrick, the top of which climbed nearly ninety feet into the cloudless sky.
The platform had been built as a floater, a dynamically positioned semisubmersible rig. At the base of each massive leg roared two-thousand-horsepower thrusters that maintained the platform's position.
Tethered by heavy rope hawsers between the pair of starboard legs was the Cromwell. A sleek, sharp-prowed vessel painted a flat, sinister black, its streamlined, sharply faceted contours lent it a resemblance to a gigantic knife blade.
Placed amidships, the snouts of three 40 mm Bofors cannons jutted out from behind metal deck shielding. The Limbo antisubmarine system, a quartet of three-foot-long hollow pipes angled upward at forty-five- degree angles was affixed near the bow. A pair of tripod-mounted L7-A 1 heavy-caliber machine guns was bolted to the roof of the elevated bridge housing.
The Cromwell was a corvette, its regenerative gas turbine engines capable of driving it at fifty knots maximum speed on smooth seas. She was a Stealth ship, on the cutting edge of radar-baffling technology two hundred years ago. But she was more than just a vessel to Quayle. All his hopes and dreams were packaged in her hundred-yard length. He was quarterdeck bred to the bone, something his officers didn't understand but respected nevertheless—or least all but one of them did.
Lieutenant Richardson was already in place by the guardrail, his ankles, wrists and arms tightly bound by lengths of hemp. A number of fist-size lead balls were attached to the ropes. He stood directly beneath a thick I beam. Suspended from the beam was a squat, compact electric hoist. A length of chain tipped with a clip hook dangled from a movable boom arm at the end of the hoist.
Two dragoons held Richardson upright beneath the chain. The other twenty-two stood at stiff attention. A small figure wearing a hooded warm-up suit stood several feet away. Although Richardson still wore his uniform, his beret and sunglasses were missing and he squinted against the bright sunlight. His deeply socketed eyes were large and almond-shaped, with black vertical slits centered in golden irises. He had no eyebrows, only a faint interlocking pattern of scales that met at the bridge of his nose. When he caught sight of Quayle, he snarled, "You fat bastard—"
The dragoon on his right cut him off with a backhanded cuff to the mouth. Richardson reeled, spitting blood on the rust-streaked deck.
Quayle regarded the man dispassionately. "Let us proceed."
Richardson started to struggle. "Don't I even get a bloody blindfold? Not even any last words?"
"You said all you were going to say at your trial, Mr. Richardson," Quayle responded flatly. "The testimony was damning."
The man jerked his head violently toward the hooded figure. "Her testimony! She's a mutie and Irish to boot. Why take her word for anything?"
The figure moved forward with lithe, graceful steps, reaching up to tug down the hood, revealing a fair-skinned, heart-shaped face with a snub nose and full lips. She was beautiful despite her grave expression.
Her eyes were blue-white, with no irises or pupils visible. Hair the color of steel was intricately woven into round braids on either side of her head. Even the shapeless warm-up suit she wore did not completely conceal the voluptuous figure swelling underneath.
In a clear voice, touched with a brogue, she said, "You know who I am and my abilities. I am never wrong."
Richardson tried to sneer, but he couldn't quite bring it off due to his split lips. "If Lord Strongbow hadn't heeded your counsel, he would still be among us."
He forced a contemptuous laugh. "I was on the Cromwell when the selkies attacked, Morrigan saw you pulled overboard. Yet rather than be drowned or torn to pieces like so many of our brothers, a fortnight ago you returned to New London—safe and unhurt. How did you manage that, you mutie whore?"
Morrigan's face remained a blank, serene mask during the man's tirade. Quietly, she replied, "I explained all that to Captain Quayle's satisfaction. I do not justify myself to a thief."
Richardson strained against both his bonds and the hands of the dragoons holding him upright. "A thief?" he half screeched. "And what is Quayle here but a thief? He stole Strongbow's position and he wasn't even a member of the elite like me. Captain Evil-eye—"
Quayle took one step forward, his massive hand darting out and closing around the lower half of Richardson's face. His words became mumbles, then a muffled shriek as Quayle began to squeeze.
"You've had your say, Mr. Richardson," said Quayle in a low, rumbling half whisper. "Morrigan saw the treason in your corrupt little mind, an ambition to incite the crew to mutiny and take command of this mission."
As he spoke, his white-skinned hand tightened around Richardson's face, his spatulate thumb digging into the soft flesh beneath the man's right ear. Richardson's eyes bugged out, and a keening wail escaped between Quayle's clenched fingers. "You also stole, sir. I cannot and will not abide a thief. There can be only one penalty."
Quayle released the lieutenant, shoving him away at the same time. The dragoons staggered as they tried to keep Richardson erect. Liquid scarlet shone bright and stark on the palm of Quayle's hand. "Proceed," he snapped.
Jeffer ies maneuvered the boom arm around on its swivel mount and pulled down the chain. One of the dragoons attached the hook to the ropes encircling Richardson's ankles, and the others stepped away from him. The man tried to maintain his balance, wobbling this way and that.
A dragoon manning the winch controls gave the release lever a swift downward wrench. The hoist emitted an electric hum, and the chain snapped taut, yanking Richardson's feet out from under him. He crashed down on the deck plates with a grunt of pain, his legs stretched straight up as the clattering chain withdrew into the boom arm.
The winch raised Richardson clear of the deck. Jefferies swung the boom around so it overhung the ocean. Squirming and cursing, Richardson hung upside down fifty feet above the surface of the sea. The wind buffeted him, causing his body to sway gently.
Quayle turned to one of the bereted men. "The cutlass, Mr. Barret."
Ceremoniously, Barret thrust out a steel scabbard, held reverently in both hands. A small brass plate reading 1804 in swirling cursive script was affixed at the midway point of the sheath.
Fitting his right hand into the intricately molded brass-basket knuckle guard, Quayle drew the cutlass with a flourish, steel rasping loudly against steel. Longer than the traditional naval swords, it was a weapon of exquisite craftsmanship. The four-foot-long, mirror-bright blade reflected the sun, highlights chasing each other up and down its double-edged length. He hefted it for a moment, admiring its perfect balance. No matter how many times he held the ceremonial cutlass, he always felt a bit like King Arthur drawing Excalibur from the stone.
Quayle marched over to the rail and gazed steadily into Richardson's face. Blood had rushed to his head, giving it a ruddy hue. "You have been adjudged guilty in accordance with maritime and military laws. I give you one last chance to repent of your crime before the sentence is carried out."
Jefferies's crimson-coated lips writhed. His voice was a husky whisper. "You and every man jack who follows you are the ones who should repent. You're traitors to the Imperium. You've turned your back on it, and with my last breath, I curse all of you."
In a cracked, quavery tenor, Jefferies began to sing. "'Rule Britannia, Britannia rule the waves--
Quayle swung the cutlass in a flat half arc. The sun glinted blindingly from the blade so no one saw the instant of impact, but they all heard it. With a meaty chock, as of a butcher's cleaver chopping into a side of beef, Jefferies' head fell from his shoulders. It plummeted straight down into the ocean, followed by a vermilion rain. A gust of wind sprayed droplets in an artless pattern across Quayle's face.
The gulls cawed, wings beating the air as they dived toward the head bobbing among the whitecaps. Quayle turned away from the rail, presenting the cutlass to Barret hilt first. "Clean it thoroughly."
"Aye, aye, sir."
To Jefferies, he ordered, "Send Mr. Richardson to the locker."
"Aye, Captain." Jefferies stepped to the rail, leaned over and worked out the hook from between the rope strands. The man's headless body plunged down, entering the water with scarcely a splash. The lead weights almost immediately dragged it beneath the waves, leaving only a red stain to spread across the surface.
Not wiping the speckles of blood from his face, Quayle silently surveyed the assembled dragoons. None of their faces registered any emotion.
In a clipped, matter-of-fact voice, he said, "I regret what had to be done. But if we are to rescue the Imperium from chaos, discipline must be uppermost in all of our minds. I will not make allowances for violations of the law, no matter how trivial they might seem. Am I understood?"
In unison, the dragoons responded, "Understood, sir."
Quayle nodded. "Dismiss the men, Mr. Jefferies. Miss Morrigan, come with me."
He lumbered across the deck, carefully avoiding places where the welds had sprung. Morrigan followed him along the passageway, up the stairs and back into
It the day office. He closed and locked the door, then gazed levelly at the woman with his flesh-bagged right eye.
"I can ill afford to lose men," he said quietly. "Richardson was well liked, and I found him a decent bloke myself."
"Sometimes," the woman replied, "that kind is the most treacherous. The poison in the pudding, the knife in the hand patting you on the back."
Quayle took a handkerchief from a pocket and dabbed at the damp blood on his cheek. "You're positive he was the thief?"
Morrigan's full lips pursed in disapproval. "I thought you had faith in my abilities."
She unzipped the front of her warm-up suit. A silver chain hung from the delicate column of her throat to her waist, and from it dangled a small charm, a talisman fashioned in the shape of three circle-topped triangles, an isosceles bracketing a pair of two scalenes.
Quayle nodded toward the chain around her neck. "Lord Strongbow trusted them, but only because he wasn't aware of your true allegiance. You've admitted to me you were a spy dispatched by the Priory of Awen. You took a very big risk in doing that."
Morrigan shrugged negligently. "Not at all. You never shared Strongbow's vengeful agenda against Ireland."
With a mocking smile, she tapped her forehead with a finger. "You continue to underestimate the true depth of my gifts. I knew you were a pragmatist upon our first meeting...and also I felt your raging resentment against Strongbow for refusing to recognize your own gifts. He was a mad fool, blinded by ambition and hatred."
Quayle matched her mocking smile. "But as Richardson pointed out, he is gone and yet here you are."
"Strongbow ignored the counsel I provided," replied Morrigan coldly. "However, if my word isn't sufficient to damn Richardson as a traitor—"
She slid a hand into a pocket of her suit. "I found this in his quarters. So not only was he snooping through your charts, he was robbing me."
Between thumb and forefinger she held a small, perfect sphere. Though he had seen it before, Quayle could not help but stare at it. Appearing no more substantial than a translucent soap bubble, the little ball looked as if it were made of rolled moonbeams. Its surface was perfectly smooth, showing no signs of pitting or even the most minuscule of casting seams.
"The bead of orichalcum," Morrigan continued. "He didn't know what it was, of course. But he knew it was important to me, and that's why he took it. At least he didn't find the diskette."
"Important to us," Quayle corrected. "That's the real reason you wanted him dead, isn't it?" He gestured toward the litter of books and maps on his desk. "Not whether he went through this material."
"Richardson suspected I was running a game on you," she said. "Persuading you to undertake a mad quest so you would turn your back on Britain and allow the invaders to gain a secure foothold."
She paused and added dryly, "And the same notion has occurred to you, more than once."
"Several times," Quayle responded stolidly. "My country is in a state of anarchy, and New London itself is under siege by your people—and here I sit, with the Imperium's elite, out in the North Sea. I don't blame the crew for being suspicious, not only of you but of me."
The woman's lips twitched in a smile. "Catch."
She tossed the little orb to Quayle, who snatched it one-handed out of the air, his flipper like paw closing around it completely. He hefted it, his good eye narrowing to a slit. "Heavy. Deceptively heavy."
