Part 26 (1/2)

Not really listening, hearing only what he wants to hear, Hopkins draws his sword and begins to hack at the lock.

The whole process takes longer than he thinks. The door is tough and he doesn't want to make any more noise than is necessary. He hauls his helmet off to cool himself down.

Finally, the lock breaks under repeated pounding from the hilt of his sword. With a crack, the door inches its way open.

The room beyond is dark.

Hopkins boots the door fully open, dropping his sword and pulling out his pistol. He cannot understand why his breathing should be so jerky, why he feels cold. The will, he steels himself, the will is absolute.

'Come out,' he shouts, louder than he had intended. 'I warn you, I am an officer of the New Protectorate under full jurisdictional provenance from the Civil Matriarch herself.

Any attempt to impede me will result in your immediate execution.' Somehow, these familiar words in this mad place make him feel much better. 'Do I make myself clear?'

'Oh very. Our saviour,' the female voice emerges from the gloom. Or is that two voices? They sound so very much alike.

He doesn't have time for this. Forget the mumbo-jumbo, those cyborgs of Neville's making are surely prowling around looking for him. It's only a dark room, and the voices sound too weak to put up any resistance. Why is he even standing out here?

He strides in, gun first. 'All right, all right, show yourselves.'

The room is large, and dim but not totally dark. There is fancy Elite furniture lying around in dark, black bundles.

The stubs of candles flicker weakly. 'Well?' he asks, aware but not afraid. He spins around, looking for the source of the voices. 'Come out.'

'Here we are...' says the voice. Hopkins squints.

One of the ornate tables is still standing the right way up. A candle burns at its centre. There is an awful, cold smell he can't place. Two sacks sit in seats, black cowls draped over their heads. He can just make out thin bony fingers spread over the table-top. 'Help us,' says the voice.

'I just want Neville,' Hopkins says, not venturing too close.

'Give him to me.'

'Neville?' says one of the bundles. 'There is no Neville, not any more.'

'What? But you said...'

'Something else he is now, in his own mind,' says the other bundle, shaking with a terrible, thin chuckle.

'Down in the gateway he is, ready for the Return.'

'Don't give me riddles,' Hopkins snaps. 'Where is he?'

The sacks continue their amused shuddering. Hopkins glimpses faces as they turn thin, dreadfully thin, a flash of exposed teeth, flickering yellow in the candlelight.

'Left us here he did, didn't he, sister?'

'Left us, yes. Something happened.'

'Something happened? What happened?' asks Hopkins, feeling his voice constricting with a terror he does not want to feel.

Eyes gleam beneath the cowls. 'Something to do with time.

Left us here, for such a long time.'

'So long... so dreadfully long. It's the boy, you see. We were unkind and the boy, he remembers.'

Hopkins raises the gun. He begins to back out. These women, these stinking crones, they are of no use to him.

The sisters start to rise. 'So long...' says one. 'So long.'

'So hungry...' says the other and Hopkins screams. Long, skeletal arms reach for him. They move with frightening speed, droolish laughter spilling from their salivating mouths. Hopkins fires once and they're on him, teeth bared.

'No! No!' he yells, fighting off their cold clutches. He fires again and the bullet pa.s.ses right through one of the hags, he sees it happen. She staggers and renews her gnawing attack.

Hopkins feels his legs give away under their furious charge and the rotten robes smother his face. Their sour breath warms his body as they bite into his armour.

Then, the weight is gone and the crones scream. A high-pitched, piercing noise Hopkins will take to his grave. A fusillade of rapid shots thuds into their wasted forms.

Hopkins punches himself clear, feeling the bullets whine over his head.

He rolls over to see Mr Redfearn firing, faster than even he has ever seen him fire before. The marksman is calm; shooting two-handed, pumping bullets into the witches, blasting them away from him.

'Ah suggest you crawl towards me, Citizen,' says Mr Redfearn, smoothly flicking the smoking barrels open to reload. Hopkins obeys, hearing the dreadful laughter dying behind him. Mr Redfearn helps him to his feet.

Hopkins turns and sees the riddled bundles jerk and cease their scrabbling movements. 'Nice to make yo' acquaintance, ladies,' says the sharpshooter.

The bundles begin to move. If Mr Redfearn is affected by this, he doesn't show it. He raises his guns again. 'Well, now there's a thing.'

'Get out of here,' says Hopkins, 'Get out!'

The bundles rise. 'Not polite,' says Diana.

'Most impolite,' says Juno. 'Feed us!'

Mr Redfearn fires enough bullets to bring them down once more. The air is sickly with cordite and smoke.

Hopkins has had enough. He turns and bolts into the corridor.

He should have been more cautious. Of course he should. It is his own fault Neville has so successfully routed his entire task force. For the first time in his life, Hopkins has been guilty of overconfidence. Or perhaps over-eagerness; after all, he knows his determination to bring the cult leader in is becoming obsessive.

The element of surprise simply hadn't worked. These fiendish traps are the result of careful planning on the part of his rival. Pelham must have betrayed him. That is the only possible reasoning. Odd really he had felt he understood the woman's weaknesses better than anyone, her morbid fear of her own mortality that underlined everything she did. This made her particularly malleable, or so he had thought.

As he waits for Mr Redfearn in the lip of an anti-grav shaft, he broods over his mistakes. Never blame others. The only failure is the failure of one's own conscious will. Still, the game is not over. Neville hasn't escaped him yet. There is still time.

Gunfire blazes down the corridor. 'Redfearn!' Hopkins bellows, no longer caring whether he is heard by anything his rival has left prowling for him. Time is of the essence; he must get back to his s.h.i.+p.

The gunslinger finally appears, very quickly indeed. The hat has gone, his long grey hair flows behind him. As he runs, he thrusts his smoking pistols back into their holsters.

'Ah do believe nothing in creation can satiate that partic'lar hunger,' he says, skidding to a halt. 'Even with nothing left of 'em but strung-together holes.'

Indeed, Hopkins hears even now their dreadful screeching.