Stephen Hunt - From the Deep of the Dark

With the commodore pulling and tugging at the control panel that stood revealed, a screen came to life showing the exterior of Tock House and the tower’s grounds. There were figures moving about in front of the tree line, but the colours of the monitor seemed all wrong, the whole scene coloured in a green tinge, while the lights thrown by the house shone like flares.

‘This equipment was constructed by the people of the metal,’ said Boxiron, helping Daunt lay down the girl’s body.

‘So it was,’ agreed the commodore. ‘A little project for my friend Coppertracks. Something more practical than his usual fancies and forays into high science.’ He fiddled with a lever and the speaker a voicebox mounted above the screen crackled into life.

‘-want the sceptre. We know you have it. You have five minutes to surrender it and then we’ll burn you out of there.’

I recognize that voice. Dick lent forward to look at the figure standing in front of the house. Bugger the lot of them. It was him. ‘That’s Walsingham, one of the State Protection Board’s section heads.’

‘Oh, law,’ Sadly squeaked. ‘We’re dead down here, says I.’

‘That’s not the name he was using earlier today,’ said Boxiron.

Dick turned to look at the steamman.

‘That man is the leader of the gang that set the ambush for Charlotte softbody. His fighters called him Captain Twist.’

Dick swore under his breath. ‘You’re sure?’

Boxiron tapped his hearing manifolds. ‘Perfectly. I was using my voicebox to reflect a low-frequency carrier wave off the shop window he and his soldiers were hiding in. It is an old steamman artifice to eavesdrop at short range.’ Boxiron indicated one of the other figures on the screen. ‘And that’s the fighter he left in charge of the ambush after he departed. His name is Cloake. He is lucky to be alive after facing my fury.’

Dick looked closer, noting the stocky short-arsed figure standing by Walsingham’s side. ‘Sweet Circle.’ Corporal Cloake.

‘They’re your people…?’ said the commodore.

Dick nodded.

‘Captain Twist is a pseudonym,’ said Daunt. ‘A royalist figure of legend who led Parliament on a merry dance centuries ago.’

‘I know that, lad,’ said the commodore. ‘And more recently than that, too. Didn’t I wear the proud title once in my youth?’

On the screen another figure emerged from the tree line, his voice carrying over to Tock House.

‘King Jude’s sceptre is not just another bauble for you to pawn, commodore. You will hand it over, by order of the Star Chamber!’

‘Carl Redlin,’ spat Dick.

The miserable royalist bastard who started all of this. If only I hadn’t been on duty that night, waiting for Redlin to turn up at Lord Chant’s mansion. None of this would have happened, or at least it would have happened to some other poor sod of an officer. How fine would that be?

‘I told you Mister Tull,’ moaned Sadly. ‘Foxes and hens dancing together. Royalists and the board, both working hand in glove. It doesn’t make any sense to me.’

The commodore angrily pulled a speaking pipe out of the console, his voice carrying over the garden from behind the intruders, silhouetted figures jumping as his voice boomed from hidden speakers inside the wood. ‘I know you well enough, Carl Redlin. A lickspittle of a skipper who wouldn’t raise a periscope without first sending for sealed orders from the Star Chamber. Has the blood of the cause run so thin that you’re letting a dirty secret policeman wander around calling himself Captain Twist? Did you murder poor young Rufus, or did you let your new board friends do it for the sport?’

Redlin looked furious. ‘I’ll take no lessons from you, you cowardly turncoat bastard. We will have the sceptre from you now!’

‘Found a backbone, have you Carl Redlin? Now that your pockets have been stuffed full of gill-neck gold? Here’s your answer and it’s good for you, my wicked sister, the gill-necks and your State Protection Board bully-boys, all.’ He threw a switch and there was a cackle of rifle fire from the top of Tock House, the figures on the screen diving for cover among the trees.

‘Won’t hit a blessed one of them,’ sighed the commodore. ‘The guns in the rifle slits need Coppertracks’ drones to man them. We’re firing blind, but it will keep their thick heads down until they realize we’re not upstairs.’

Daunt held up the sceptre, regarding it with a mixture of dismay and reverence. ‘So this is the real article then, after all. King Jude’s sceptre. I fear my deductions about the nature of Damson Shades’ true vocation are proved correct. I take no pleasure in it.’

Dick looked at the girl, still comatose and muttering in tongues. ‘She’s a bloody good thief to have lifted the sceptre out of the House of Guardians. How did she end up like that?’

‘She collapsed as she was walking through the grounds towards the house,’ said Daunt. ‘Boxiron had only just carried her inside before you arrived.’

The hulking steamman nodded. ‘Charlotte softbody was injured in the ambush, but she suffered no normal wound, no physical injuries. She and the man called Mister Cloake appeared to be fighting with dark powers, unnatural energies flung and exchanged between them.’

Dick snorted. ‘Him? Corporal Cloake would stick a blade between your ribs as soon as look at you. There isn’t any more to him than that. He is one of Walsingham’s knifemen, that’s all.’

Commodore Black lifted the sceptre out of Daunt’s hands. ‘I’ll be keeping hold of this.’

‘The sceptre is more than a symbol,’ warned Daunt.

‘It is duty seeking me out,’ said the commodore. ‘The land has had her wicked way again, forcing me out of my rest and pushing me down the hard path. I told you, lad, did I not warn you that it would be this way? No choice in the matter for poor old Blacky. There never is. Always me. Always me alone.’

‘You are not alone,’ said Daunt. ‘We stand by you in this.’

The commodore stalked to one of the iron doors, seized the lock, and spun the metal weight around. ‘You stand by me, do you? No time for standing around, boys, let’s be out of here before those killers outside realize there’s nothing more upstairs than a few rusty old guns pointing out with not a defender behind their sights.’

On the other side of the door, a narrow corridor of raw rock face curved around to terminate by the waist-high gates of a lifting room. The lift looked ominously ramshackle, waiting to be activated by them.

‘Another new addition to the place, Blacky?’ Dick asked.

‘That’s the thing about living on top of the hill,’ said the commodore, ‘it always occurred to me that there should be a quicker way to reach the bottom. And since I must make the journey, it only seemed equitable for me to purchase the tavern in the village below whose cellars we shall emerge in. That way, when I entertain in an ale house, I’m not pouring my money into some other rogue’s pockets.’

How much money had the old sea dog blown on building a backdoor to his pile? Well, not so much blown, Dick thought to himself. No, definitely not wasted this time.

It was a tight squeeze inside the lifting room’s cage, just enough space to shut the gate behind the party after they carried the girl thief inside. As the gate clicked shut there was a lurch while the lift’s counterweights attempted to match the overloaded state of the cage, and then they were moving down, faster and faster. Dick hoped the commodore had not short-changed the builders who’d installed his escape route. It would be an ironic end to all the murderous missions he had undertaken for the State Protection Board if Walsingham and his killers broke into the tower only to discover six bodies lying mangled at the bottom of a hidden shaft.