Part 28 (1/2)

'Sp.a.w.n of Amaja urs Amaja!' the amba.s.sador yelled. The children crowding the floor scrambled away in panic from this huge monster that had suddenly invaded the a.s.sembly room, a fur-covered demon bearing a sword slicked in the blood of their parents.

Commodore Black lowered his sabre at Ortin urs Ortin. 'That and worse, amba.s.sador.'

Ortin charged, pure animal savagery bearing down upon the old u-boat man. Commodore Black stepped forward and met him with a clash of steel.

'You trapped us, tricked us!' Ortin bayed. 'You butchered half the great houses!'

'No, lad, not me.' The commodore fell back, grunting. Ortin's strength was far beyond that of any fighter from the race of man. 'But I'm going to settle for you all the same. For Nandi.'

Ortin struck the commodore's sabre with his steel, again and again, making the commodore's arm ring with the wicked pain of it. There was little room for sophistication in this battle, his parries blunted by the raw swinging power of the Pericurian's ma.s.sive frame. The commodore's rare bones turned into an anvil from the battering.

As their fight stumbled back and forth across the a.s.sembly room, Commodore Black caught a brief glimpse of the barricade where the front line of cadets was thrusting bayonets against the crush of the Pericurian advance, the second line unable to shoot now without hitting their own side. Children, blessed children asked to fight and die like this. To fight for their lives. Their stronghold at the centre of the mountain was seconds away from falling...

Commodore Black yelled in surprise as he slipped on the blood of a dead Pericurian soldier and sprawled backwards, his sabre sliding away across the floor. He was weaponless. Ortin urs Ortin moved in and the commodore met the amba.s.sador's insane, glazed eyes as the huge beast raised his blade upwards for the killing stroke.

'Leave...me...to die.' Jethro coughed.

The steamman shook his visored head at Jethro's wounded form and dropped the warhammer with a clang, mounting the rungs up to the circle of stained gla.s.s windows. 'No, I cannot. You must trust me.'

Hannah watched the huge steamman stop in front of the stained gla.s.s, drinking in the final hidden section of Bel Bessant's terrible creation. 'Don't do this, Boxiron. I would only have used the G.o.d-formula to fix what wasn't meant to be broken. What sort of G.o.d will you create by giving such a thing to Knipe? For the love of the Circle, he killed my father, Nandi, Chalph, Alice, he-'

'Be quiet, damson,' threatened the colonel. 'The Inquisition was good enough to send us a machine to break codes, it's only fitting that we use it as they intended.'

'What sort of thing will you be?' Hannah cried.

'A better thing than your precious Circlism,' spat the colonel. 'All this time the church knew what it had here the means to save our land! And your people buried it away; you forgot it along with our greatness! And the church claims to care for the needs of the people...'

'I have completed the steganographic key,' said Boxiron. 'I am ready to begin deciphering the main code.'

Colonel Knipe picked up the first two sections of the G.o.d-formula that Hannah had dropped and threw them towards the steamman. 'Pick up the girl's pencil and begin writing on that paper. Quickly! Your Inquisition friend only has a few minutes of life left in him.'

Hannah looked down. Jethro Daunt had fallen silent and was lying with his back against the flare-house cannon, as still as a corpse bar for the trembling of one single leg. The floor below was awash with his blood.

'Jethro Daunt is not a member of the Inquisition,' said Boxiron as he worked. 'He is not even a churchman anymore.'

'So you say. For hire, then. A mercenary, no better than the dirty wet-snouts the senate believed they were buying.'

Boxiron continued to write out the equations of the final piece of the G.o.d-formula, his iron fingers moving several times more rapidly than any human hand could. 'Not for hire, for love.'

'He really was going to marry the archbishop?' said Colonel Knipe, sounding surprised. 'Well, I never did get around to checking if that part of his story was true. More fool him. Everything that you love you end up losing. That is the way of life.'

'What will you do with this, colonel?' asked Boxiron. His voicebox sounded as if it was vibrating with pain, as if the mere effort of translating the final section of the G.o.d-formula burned at the core of his being.

'I will save your Jackelian friend. I have never broken my word.'

'Afterwards.'

'I shall restore Jago to its natural position at the head of the world's nations, just as I shall burn the last wet-snout left on the island into ashes. Fire, then ice!'

Hannah pulled herself up, clutching her bleeding scalp. If that meant what she thought! 'You can't.'

'My will shall be done,' shouted the colonel. 'The world's winter shall be Jago's summer. Our civilization will rise once more. Everyone will want to dwell here again and those who do not will consider themselves cursed. And they shall be And they shall be!'

No. A new age of ice. A winter without end, never the spring again as the world turned.

'Please!' Hannah begged Boxiron to stop what he was doing, but instead the steamman slid the final completed section of the G.o.d-formula back towards Colonel Knipe.

'We gave the world everything, little girl,' snarled the colonel. 'And they turned their backs on us, believed us fit only for use as a rock to break the rising wet-snout tide. A mere p.a.w.n in the game of our betters. We pa.s.sed the world the light once, after the age of ice ended, now the torch of their civilizations shall be ours to snuff out again.'

Seizing the completed G.o.d-formula, the colonel vaulted over the railing, landing on the lower walkway, then sprinted into the flare-house instrument room and sealed its door behind him.

Hannah was on her feet, groggily climbing down the ladder to the lower level. She picked up Boxiron's hammer and smashed at the door to the instrument room, but its head bounced uselessly off. She screamed for Boxiron to help, but he was standing on the upper gantry as immobile as an iron statue. Had the enormity of what he had done finally begun to sink in? The terrible cost of his friends.h.i.+p with the man who had saved him? She tried to batter the crystal panel in the door, but it had been hardened to withstand a flare misfiring inside the launch barrel. Hannah's strength was draining away. On the other side of the gla.s.s, a haze of twisting, turning diamond-sharp panes of light surrounded Colonel Knipe as he read the G.o.d-formula, enveloped by energies that were too exotic to be contained by the mortal world. His body was growing translucent, his organs pulsing with light. He was shedding his mortal sh.e.l.l.

Hannah felt fingers circling her ankle.

'Don't...let...him.'

'It's no good,' said Hannah, kneeling beside the ex-parson. 'The colonel's in there changing. He's taken the G.o.dhead.'

'Boxiron! Boxiron!'

'He's frozen,' cried Hannah. 'Please, Jethro, Boxiron's not even moving anymore.'

There was an awful ripping sound behind the instrument room door, something alien and terrible, the fabric of matter itself tearing.

It was the laughter of a new demiG.o.d striding the earth.

Commodore Black heard the cadet commander's yell as she scooped up his sabre and tossed it across to him. He rolled through the blood on the flagstones and speared Ortin urs Ortin squarely through the stomach, the tip of his sabre emerging through the back of the Pericurian amba.s.sador's jacket.

Commodore Black was on his knees, the amba.s.sador looming over him, still trying to move forward despite the wound. At first the commodore could barely hold the amba.s.sador back, but gradually the realization of his imminent death seemed to sink into Ortin urs Ortin, his eyes losing their glare of insanity.

'Well played dear boy.'

The commodore nodded, trying to rise, still keeping both hands on the sabre's grip and preserving the gap between them.

'I am not not a savage.' a savage.'

Commodore Black pulled out his sabre and the amba.s.sador swayed. The old u-boat man raised the steel to his nose in salute as the amba.s.sador crashed onto the flagstones, his monocle rolling away across the floor.

'Just two blessed n.o.bles,' said the commodore, 'living through a savage age as best we can.'

But the amba.s.sador was beyond hearing him.

Commodore Black turned as the barricade cracked open to admit a wave of ab-locks, tools jangling from leather belts, bayonet-fitted rifles at the ready, followed by a pair of men in guildsmen's robes. They looked for all of the world like a couple of hunters taking their hounds out for a walk through the vaults of the mountain.

'Our RAM suits wouldn't fit through the Horn's corridors,' said the nearest of the guildsmen.