Part 12 (2/2)

The stone screen began to fill up with primary code-level iconography similar to the symbols on the keyboard of Hannah's punch-card writer.

'There's not even an audit trail of an erasure,' gasped Hannah. 'It's as if the records were never there in the first place. n.o.body can do this, it's simply not possible.'

'As impossible as that dark storm that shouldn't have brewed up outside here,' noted the commodore.

'That's almost a whole year of your parent's work,' uttered Nandi, her voice cracking. 'Is it just the bookmarks a.s.sembling everything into a coherent project that have gone, or have the source doc.u.ments also been destroyed?'

Hannah ran back to the card writer. 'I'll check.'

Hannah had nearly finished composing the query when Nandi called her over again. The image on the surface of the stone screen was reforming. The code-level iconography Hannah had called up was vanis.h.i.+ng, to be replaced by a single line sitting in the middle of the green oblong.

Access denied.

'This is outrageous,' spluttered Nandi. 'The college paid good-'

'It's not your line of access that's been pulled,' said Hannah. She grabbed one of the blank punch cards, turned it over and began to scribble across it with a pencil. 'It's mine!'

'What's happening, la.s.s?' asked the commodore. 'Does the guild believe their wicked bomb on the atmospheric carriage did its black business after all and that you're no longer alive?'

There was the sound of a commotion outside their cell, growing louder.

'I knew we were fools for coming back here,' whined the commodore. 'Fearsome transaction engines tended to by equally monstrous guildsmen. We should have stayed in the capital. At least that prison of a hotel has a mortal drop of wine or two in its cellars that's fit to wet my blistering lips with.'

The study cell's door burst open, a small crowd of burly guildsmen wielding discipline staffs rus.h.i.+ng in, followed by the one valveman Hannah had been trying to avoid since she got here. Vardan Flail!

'What is the meaning of this?' roared Nandi. 'You are interrupting my work. Work you've been handsomely paid to facilitate.'

'And we are indeed happy to be facilitating it,' smirked the high guild master, 'Damson Tibar-Wellking, is it not? But we will be facilitating it with a different guild archivist from now on.'

The guildsmen lowered their staffs in warning towards Commodore Black's chest as he barged forward shouting, 'Now you let her be!'

'This is an internal guild matter,' warned Vardan Flail. 'We have traced the recent switching storm that took down this vault back to this young lady's sloppy work. An infinite loop hidden in the search layer to avoid detection upon injection.'

'You're lying' accused Hannah. She hadn't written any such loop in any of her queries, let alone a hidden one. Such an act would be sabotage.

'I had such high hopes for you,' said Vardan Flail. 'But now your transaction-engine privileges have been cancelled and we shall have to find an alternative task for you. Something manual, I think, seeing as you have proven yourself unworthy of more stimulating work.'

Hannah slipped the punch card she had been scribbling into one of Nandi's hands behind the young academic's back, hoping that the guildsmen wouldn't notice. 'Don't let them take me.'

'I need Hannah's help for my work,' protested Nandi.

'Not this one,' laughed Vardan Flail. 'She has other engines to attend to now.'

He didn't mean...they couldn't do that that to her? On the high guild master's instructions, two of the valvemen grabbed Hannah and bundled her out of the room, while the others held the commodore and Nandi back with their staffs. to her? On the high guild master's instructions, two of the valvemen grabbed Hannah and bundled her out of the room, while the others held the commodore and Nandi back with their staffs.

'You can't do this!' shouted Hannah, as she was dragged down the pa.s.sages that led towards the lower levels the turbine halls, halls filled with the deadly electric energies that powered Jago. 'I only have days left until I sit the church exams.'

'Really,' said Vardan Flail, as if this thought had only just occurred to him. 'Then you'll be glad of the chance to rest your brain. Although I understand working in the turbine halls can be quite physically exerting.'

'You dirty little jigger,' yelled Hannah. 'You won't stop me. I'll see you hanged for what you've done.'

The guild master shook his head sadly. 'But fortunately, you seem to have more than enough energy to spare.' He nodded to his brutes. 'Tell the charge-master that she's to work double s.h.i.+fts and have no more than two hours' sleep a night.' He smiled at Hannah. 'I understand that you have been boasting to the other guild initiates that you can pa.s.s the church exams in your sleep. Let's see how well you can put that into practice.' A pair of steel doors clanked open in front of Hannah, leading to a lifting-room with a mineshaft-long drop down to the guild's vast, heavily s.h.i.+elded turbine rooms. The burly men yanked her inside.

'Do be careful down there, my dear. It can be quite treacherous work.'

Then the doors shut and the lifting room began to descend towards the lowest levels of the guild's vaults. Right alongside the h.e.l.l the Jagonese denied existed.

'We can't just let them take her!' Nandi shouted to the commodore, an overwhelming rush of panic overtaking her as she realized that she might never see Hannah again.

'Leave it be, la.s.s,' advised the commodore, glancing warily at the staff-wielding guildsmen penning them in the study cell. 'How many of these crows could we take down? The guild has the law on their side and a cruel mistress she can be. We won't be able to help Hannah from the inside of their police fortress's dungeons.'

'Forget what you promised the professor back in the Kingdom,' said Nandi. 'It's not my safety you need to look after; it's Hannah's. You just have to lift the robes of any of these dolts to see what the radiation of the turbine halls will do to her.'

'I'm not abandoning any Jackelian la.s.s to swing on the guild's yardarm,' said the commodore. 'But there's a time to cut the enemy's line and there's a time to tack for a better position, and we need to aim for the latter if we're to winkle Hannah out of their wicked clutches.'

'What if I decide to do what's right?' said Nandi. 'Here. Now. Will you still follow me?'

'My blade is sharp for it, la.s.s,' said the commodore, 'but don't be confusing winning a battle with winning the war.'

'They'll work her until she drops, she'll have no chance of pa.s.sing the church's entrance exam. And then they'll have all the time in the world to kill her slowly. You saw what they did to our atmospheric carriage, nearly blowing us all up to get to her...' Nandi tried to yell down the corridor, the guild's sentries holding her back. 'We'll get you out of here, Hannah, I promise. We'll get you out of here!'

'As long as we're still alive to do it,' said the commodore, 'you and me both. Still alive to help her.'

The old u-boat man was right, curse him. Every fibre of Nandi's being was crying at her to push into the corridor and grab Hannah back from Vardan Flail, but they were in the heart of the guild's power here, and a long way from the capital. They had to leave Hannah at least for now and try to work for her release through the cathedral, maybe through the Jackelian emba.s.sy. Jethro Daunt would know what to do. He had to.

Back home, Nandi had the professor to look after her and her protector had dispatched the commodore in her stead to fulfil a similar role on Jago. Hannah had n.o.body now that the woman who had acted as her mother had been murdered, and that wouldn't do, not for a ward of the college.

Nandi was going to save Hannah from the guild, whatever it took and however perilous the price.

CHAPTER TEN.

'This is outrageous,' protested Nandi as she and Commodore Black were hustled to the waiting atmospheric carriage. 'You are impeding my research! Work you have been generously paid to a.s.sist.'

'You will have a new archivist a.s.signed to you tomorrow,' said the guildsman heading the group of staff-wielding toughs escorting them out of the vaults. 'And by that time we will have fully restored operations in the transaction engines outside your study cell.'

The commodore snarled, 'I know the fixing you're planning to do, and it's more of the same rotten work you've already been at: erasing what we've already uncovered inside your wicked thinking machines.'

'The valves hold all, nothing is ever lost,' recited the guildsman.

'Nothing but a poor helpless la.s.s,' said the commodore. 'But you listen well, lad. We had better be finding Damson Hannah Conquest again, and hale with it, or I'll be coming back down here with my crew and a fistful of hull hammers from my precious u-boat, and I'll show you how it is we brew up a switching storm back home.'

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