The Unquiet Grave Read online

  She found herself envying the pair of them, just a little.

  They walked past rows of shelves packed with dozens of artefacts. Red paid the dusty finds little attention, but was intrigued to note that a few of them seemed to be robot parts. Droids had been common enough in her day, but there were none in the Accord. The trick of making them had been one of the many branches of knowledge lost in the Bloodshed.

  No one made intelligent machines any more.

  Godolkin had moved on ahead and stopped near a long workbench. There was something on it, draped with a silvery sheet of fabric-metal. "Here, Blasphemy."

  He pulled the sheet away, revealing the object beneath. The one he'd found embedded in the wall of a cavern, right under her feet.

  It was a long, flattened cylinder of dark metal, ridged and fluted, the ends subtly rounded. It widened at one end into a broad dome, set with panels and indicator lights. It was two-and-a-half, maybe three metres long, massively built. Impossibly old.

  Durham Red recognised it immediately. She had climbed into one exactly like it, more than twelve hundred years ago.

  It was a cryotube.

  And it was intact.

  9. PAST TENSE

  Not for the first time that day, Durham Red found herself without words.

  She ran her gloved hand over the ridged surface of the cryotube, feeling the faint vibration of its systems, the vast strength of its construction. If it wasn't the exact same model she had slept in for twelve centuries, it was damn close. She couldn't see any differences that she could remember.

  Chunks of brittle Lavannos stone still adhered between some of the ridges. She prodded one and it fell away, thumping softly onto the carpeted floor of the reliquary.

  "I came a long way to see this, Godolkin," she breathed.

  There was no chance she could have stayed away from Lavannos. If Godolkin's intention was simply to bring her here, to engineer their final confrontation, then he couldn't have picked a better way to do it. Once she knew the retreat-world harboured an intact cryotube she would have walked barefoot through lava to get her hands on the thing.

  She had woken into a universe unimaginably different from her own. A dark age of insanity, ignorance and despair had swept the galaxy clean of everything she had experienced. She was adrift in this strange, violent time. Even her world was gone.

  All her roots had been severed.

  Until now. This one object, ripped from a cavern wall under the melted, glassy surface of Lavannos, was a direct link to Earth. If nothing else it gave her a chance to touch, one last time, a little piece of home.

  As for its contents, she hardly dared hope.

  She didn't know how long tubes like this had been in service when she had gone to sleep, but her day was one of constant improvement and innovation. She couldn't imagine that this cryotube could be much younger than her own. Which meant that whoever lay inside was very probably a product of her world.

  It might even be someone she knew. More than one Strontium Dog had opted out of the world. "Godolkin? I know you didn't have my best interests at heart when you called me about this. But thanks anyway."

  He seemed mildly embarrassed by the sentiment, and she wasn't surprised when he changed the subject. "Were such devices common in your day?"

  "Well, they were around if you had the money. Cryo-freezing was never cheap. It took all I had just for a short break."

  "Under the circumstances, it would appear you ended up with a bargain."

  That was a matter of opinion, but Red wasn't about to press the point. "It still has power, at least," she said, gesturing towards some of the indicator lights scattered over the tube's surface. "Micro-fusion core. It's good for about three thousand years, or so the guys at the freezer bank said."

  "So it may yet contain a living soul?"

  "That's kind of what I was hoping." She paused, staring intently down at the tube, trying to picture what lay inside, as though Ketta's magic panel lay on it. "Godolkin, I'm not sure we should open this."

  His expression told her that was not the reaction he'd been expecting. She hadn't quite been expecting it herself. But now she was here, with the cryo-tube in front of her, she wondered if she actually had the right to open it up.

  Godolkin looked nonplussed. "I'm not sure I understand, mistress. Didn't you travel to Lavannos in order to do just that?"

  "That and a vacation, yeah." She sighed. "But Godolkin, look around you. This galaxy isn't exactly the nicest place someone could wake up in: ask me, I should know. Now I'm a big girl, I can take care of myself. But what about the poor bastard in here?"

  The Iconoclast glowered. "Mistress, you did not intend to sleep twelve centuries away. I find it hard to imagine anyone else would, either. Do you not think that whoever lies in this sarcophagus has rested long enough?"

  She never got to answer, because at that moment they both heard the outer door of the heatlock sliding open.

  "Crap!" she hissed. "What now?"

  Godolkin was draping the fabric-metal sheet back over the tube. "Concealment," he replied. "We hide."

  He ran around to a space between two shelves, did something to the panels there. Red watched them slide away, leaving a rectangle of blackness. "In here, Blasphemy. Hurry!"

  She darted across the reliquary and into the opening. There were stairs beyond so she had to grab the wall to avoid tumbling down them, then trotted down a few to let Godolkin squeeze in behind. A second later he slid the panel closed, leaving the steps in total darkness.

  Past the panels, she heard the inner lock door opening.

  Godolkin gave her a gentle shove. She took the hint and headed down the steps, working entirely by feel. Her night-vision was very good indeed, but even she relied on a photon or two. No light was reaching the stairs at all.

  After a minute or two she reached the final stair and stepped down onto a smooth, faintly curving floor. Another bubble cavern, like the one full of corpses back at the Eye. Lavannos must have been riddled with them.

  Red wondered where all that gas came from. She'd seen some weird and wonderful planets in her time, but none that was basically a giant sponge made of black glass.

  She felt Godolkin step down next to her. "Why are we hiding?" she whispered. "If it's the bad guys, we can take them."

  "It might be the abbot," he said. "The reliquary, this cavern, are passions of his."

  Red scowled in the darkness. "I don't trust the abbot."

  "The abbot is a good man. Whatever crimes may occur on this world, I'm certain he's not a part of them."

  "Harrow thinks he's a liar."

  Godolkin snorted. "Harrow thinks you are a saint. His judgement of character cannot be described as expert."

  Red glanced across at him, and was surprised to see his outline. There was a tiny amount of light coming into the cavern from somewhere. Even her phenomenal eyes were having difficulty adjusting.

  But there should have been no light here at all.

  She turned her head, trying to find the source of it, using the edges of her vision as if she were trying to locate a faint star by looking slightly to one side of it. Sure enough, there was ghostly, infinitesimal luminescence coming from one side of the cavern.

  She followed it, and within a few metres found the wall with her outstretched fingers. "Godolkin? Come and have a look at this."

  "The wall is glowing," he confirmed. "Could there be phosphorescent chemicals in the stone, perhaps?"

  "Maybe." The dim light was outlining objects in the walls, a random scattering of shapes. "These are abbot's finds, eh?"

  "Some of them."

  On an impulse, Red took her right glove off. She placed her bare hand against the rock.

  It was cool and slightly damp - condensation from her own breath, probably. She leaned close, putting her nose almost against the cold surface of it. There was something about the light that bothered her.

  Godolkin walked into her from behind.

  It was only
a nudge, but in the almost complete absence of light it took her by surprise. She just managed not to make a sound as she stumbled into the wall.

  As she fell against it, it moved.

  The motion was tiny, barely there at all. She'd never have felt it though the gloves. But as her weight fell against the cavern wall she felt it shiver in response.

  "Sneck," she said, very quietly. Things as big as caves were not supposed to move. Not even a little.

  There was a long, low groaning sound, as of vast stresses held in check for centuries, and suddenly released. "Godolkin? This is where you pulled the cryo-tube out, yeah?"

  "It is."

  "And you pulled it pretty hard, didn't you. Just snapped it out of the wall, I'll bet."

  "You could say that."

  As if in response, the cavern wall cracked from top to bottom.

  It happened in an instant. There was a single, ear-splitting report, and a tiny puff of dust that hit Red in the face. When she next looked at the wall, she could just see a vertical line in it that hadn't been there before.

  She heard the panel into the reliquary slide open.

  Scant edges of light filtered down the steps, into the cavern. There was the sound of footfalls; someone was coming down, probably to investigate the noise.

  Red hauled the blaster from her belt and checked the charge. She smiled grimly. It was rather low on fuel, but even on full power it was good for a few shots yet. To her right, Godolkin was levelling both the guns he had taken from the wheel room.

  The footsteps stopped. Light, blinding and powerful, erupted into the cavern.

  Red yelped in pain and fired wildly, covering her eyes with her free hand. After so long in the darkness her eyes were fully adapted to the gloom, her pupils completely dilated. Whoever had walked down those steps had shone a simple hand-lume into the cavern, and almost taken her retinas off.

  Plasma fire ripped towards her, horribly loud.

  She had moved as soon as she'd fired, knowing she hadn't hit anything and having no intention of being a stationary target. The shots screamed past her into the wall.

  Red hit the floor, sliding, bringing the gun up again. Before she could pull the trigger a sear of yellow fire lanced directly out at her; there was a gigantic impact, smacking her right hand back so hard it almost dislocated her shoulder, spinning her over backwards. The blaster had been blown clean out of her grasp.

  She lay crumpled for a moment, blinded by the gunfire, her hand singing with pain, electric jolts crackling from her wrist to her shoulder. She realised that she was a sitting duck a fraction of a second before Godolkin's guns thundered, and there was the ghastly sound of a human body taking two plasma shots simultaneously.

  Burning offal spattered the walls.

  Red rolled onto her rump, sitting up, cradling her hand. Through watering eyes she saw Godolkin hammering across the cavern towards her.

  Behind her, a thin, high whine from her blaster became a sputtering hiss.

  And then a memory, unbidden, bubbling up through the dark swamp of drug-induced amnesia. Cold metal at her back, the sound of gunfire, Judas Harrow stabbing a little plasma derringer with a knife. He was rigging it to explode.

  Just before it did, it made the exact same noise that her own gun was making now.

  Godolkin grabbed her by her damaged shoulder, and wrenched her up. She screamed, and then she was flying through the air.

  The gun detonated.

  The cavern went white-hot, white-bright. Red hit the ground hard, sliding and tumbling away. Her eyes were closed, but she was still dazzled through her own eyelids. The noise was incredible. It sounded like half the cavern was coming down around her, a cacophony of falling stone, shattering glass, the hissing impacts of dust and sand.

  Very quickly after that, the cavern turned silent and dark.

  "Ow. Sneck. Ow!" Red was trying to get to her feet, but she felt as though she'd been through a grinder. She only managed it on the third try.

  She could barely see. There was light in front of her, but her vision was an agonised blur, her eyes streaming. There was rock-dust in the air, so much she could taste it as she breathed. Fragments crunched under her boots as she stumbled forwards. "Godolkin?"

  There was no reply. Red blinked rapidly, wiping her face with the one hand that still worked. Her fingers came away wet, whether from blood or just tears and snot she couldn't tell. Her vision wouldn't clear.

  "Godolkin! Sound off - that's an order, you big lummox!"

  There was an answering groan. Rock slid against rock. He must have been buried; now he was fighting his way free of half the cavern wall. If they had done nothing else this trip, Red reflected, they'd certainly given the abbot's archaeology habit a twist.

  She reached down to her bodice and ripped part of it away, used it to wipe the fluid from her eyes. That helped a little, enough to let her see a haze of bluish light in front of her. And a massive shape, rising from a pile of broken wall. Godolkin.

  She gave a small sigh of relief.

  "Godolkin? I can't see too much. Are you hurt?"

  "I am-" He coughed hard, and spat. "I am uninjured. Largely."

  "Great." She shook her head, trying to clear it. "I hope you're going to look after me, now I'm blind."

  He walked over to her, his footsteps crunching over rock and dust. She felt him looming over her. "Your sight will return within minutes, Blasphemy. You are merely dazzled."

  Red sniffed. "Bloody plasma guns. No wonder everyone's buying particle..."

  He was right, however. She could see more clearly with every passing moment, although her ears were still ringing. Her right arm hurt like hell, too. She flexed it experimentally, wiggling her fingers. There didn't seem to be any permanent damage. She wouldn't be playing any racquetball for a few days, though.

  The cavern was flooded with soft blue light.

  Godolkin was standing beside her now, looking at the source of the light. Red wiped her eyes one last time and followed his gaze.

  "Holy shit," she whispered.

  The faint glow they had seen earlier hadn't been part of the rock, it had been filtering through a thin part of the wall. Weakened by Godolkin's violent removal of the cryo-tube, the stone there had fallen prey to stress, time, and finally the explosion of Red's blaster - the cavern wall, in a section maybe five metres high and the same distance across, now lay in razor-sharp fragments scattered across the floor.

  There was a room beyond it.

  Red padded warily forwards. The room was like nothing she'd seen on Lavannos, or anywhere in this time. Instead of the intricate churchlike architecture of the Accord, or the sepulchral white stone of the monastery, this was metallic, hard-edged, cleanly functional. The walls were muted silver and flat grey, the flooring a kind of rubberised mesh, and cool blue light radiated from the ceiling panels. There were discreet display screens set into the walls, a couple of integral seating units on one side, storage on the other. The room looked neat, efficient. Expensive.

  It was also canted over at several degrees from the vertical, the far right-hand corner of the floor as the lowest point.

  She had reached the threshold now, the point at which rock became metal. The open end of the room was shattered, she could see now, ripped in half by the formation of the cavern. Chunks of it had been flung up and out, then frozen in the solidifying stone.

  This was the source of the abbot's sacred relics.

  Red stepped over the lip of broken rock and into the room. The floor around the lip was smeared with solidified rock, and there were truncated spears of the stuff adhering to both floor and ceiling. A long track of black glass trailed down to the low corner, pooling there. The rubber mesh under her boots was scorched and burned through in dozens of spots and tracks.

  "Godolkin? Did you know this was here?"

  "I did not." He clambered over the edge to join her, running his great hands along the broken edges of rock. "I cannot imagine anyone knew, otherwise the abbot
would have been in here with a fusion lance." He reached down to one of the broken stalagmites, snapped it free with a twist of his arm. "Blasphemy, this structure was here when the crust of Lavannos melted."

  A whole room, trapped in the glassy stone like a fly in amber. How much else? There was a hatchway at the far end of the room, an octagonal metal door that could lead anywhere.

  "What do you think it is? A ship?"

  Godolkin was studying the display panels. They were intact, but blank. "This looks like no space vessel I have ever seen, Blasphemy."

  "Yeah, well. Where I come from, starships don't look like cathedrals on wings. Guess times change." She prodded the seat cushions with a finger. Dust puffed up as the foam crumbled.

  The room looked brand new from a distance, preserved perfectly in the rock. But that, she could see now, was an illusion: the silvery walls were mapped with an infinity of tiny cracks, the mesh squashed beneath her boots and didn't spring back up, the seating had gone to powder.

  Whatever this place was, it was incredibly old. She could easily imagine it existing before the crust of Lavannos had turned to foam. Especially if it had once housed the cryo-tube.

  And where there was one tube, there might be more.

  She walked past Godolkin, towards the door. There was a flat metal pad next to it, some kind of control, but the ceiling lights must have been running on emergency power only. Nothing else worked.

  "Help me get this door open."

  "Mistress, we should retrieve Harrow."

  She couldn't think about that now. "He'll be okay, I locked him in. Now get a grip on this thing and heave, okay?"

  With the Iconoclast's strength working at it, the door came open with a minimum of fuss. Red peered through, into a corridor maybe ten metres long. It had a strange cross-section, eight-sided, like a broad coffin. Looking at it made her feel vaguely uneasy.

  The far end of the corridor was level. It bent in the middle, the walls there crumpled and flaking.

  Red stepped through the door. The corridor branched halfway along, to her left. The position of that branch struck an odd chord in her, something she couldn't immediately identify. She trotted along and rounded the bend.