Kal Moonheart Trilogy: Dragon Killer, Roll the Bones & Sirensbane (77 page)

‘We are the same, you and I,’ he began.

Kal’s anger surged inside her. If he was trying to win her round, then this was an opening salvo that misfired. ‘We are
not
the same!’ she snarled. ‘You are a monster. You’ve enslaved thousands. You killed your own son! You—’

‘Do you have parents, Kal?’ Sirensbane asked her.

‘What? No. They were killed years ago.’

‘Your parents failed you, then,’ Sirensbane stated, as if it were an incontrovertible fact. ‘Like my son failed me. I tried to keep Che close, to protect him from those who would kill him out of superstition or fear, but he wanted his freedom. He took that freedom, and he took my money too. He had already taken my wife from me—she died giving birth to him.’

‘Are you seriously trying to blame all
this
’—Kal gestured around the dome—‘on Che?’

‘No, of course not,’ Sirensbane said. ‘I make no excuse for my actions. You will get no hard luck story from me. Just honesty—the kind you won’t get from your politician friends. What I am saying is, that when you are truly alone in the world, with no family or friends, then you learn to work for no one but yourself. Nothing else matters. You don’t let other people stop you—their only aim is to get what you want, anyway. You don’t let laws stop you, either—they only serve other people, whose only aim is to get what you want.

‘
That
is where we are alike, Kalina Moonheart. Twenty years ago, I was like you, working for the then-governor of Port Black, carrying out assignments of dubious moral standing. Watching and learning how the system works. In twenty years time,
you
could be like
me
. Tragedy will break you quickly; the world will grind you down slowly; a combination of both will soon change your perspective on life … and one day you will have to decide: will you get dragged under the waves and sink, or rise up and swim.’

Kal squeezed her eyes shut to try to keep Sirensbane’s sinuous words out of her skull. ‘You want me to swim with you … to join your shady empire, is that it? But how can I work for you after all you’ve done? You are evil … pure evil.’

Sirensbane gave her patient smile. ‘Evil is just a label, a judgement passed on us by other people. But in my world, there is no judgement. We can be free of all that. I told you before, Kal—I am a libertarian. Everything is permitted; nothing ever is taboo. Good and evil are as little significance as the black and white clothes we both wear; as little significance as my black skin and your white skin.’

Kal shook her head, but it only made her dizzy and even more nauseous. What was he talking about? It was clearly nonsensical bullshit … and yet the words were loaded with a vague promise …

‘But whatever you think of me, Kal,’ he continued, ‘I’m asking you to work
with
me, not
for
me. Do you think bar owners care about the right or wrong-doings of the people
they
work with, their patrons? What about a gambler like yourself? Your clients, the degenerates you sit down with at the card tables. Do you judge them? Of course not, yet you take their money—you take their business. Working with me, Kal, would not compromise your values.’

Kal’s mind couldn’t find the words to debunk Sirensbane’s sweet talk. She was hardly an eloquent speaker at the best of times, let alone with a head full of chemicals. Sirensbane’s arguments were tailored especially for her. She felt the truth in his words. ‘I …’ she began.

He sensed her hesitation, and pressed his point home. ‘My empire is large and expanding, Kal. I deal with legal goods too, and you can help me branch out there if you want. When you control the seas, every country in the world is there to be exploited and sold to. Do they not say that whoever commands the trade of the world commands the riches of the world? Not only that, you are not answerable to kings or queens, senators or generals. Benedict Godsword and his ilk will never find you again, let alone rope you into their affairs. You can be your own master, of your own boundless domain.’

He gestured out of the glass dome to the infinite darkness beyond. ‘Rule the sea, Kal, and live free!’

This time Kal didn’t hesitate. She had made her choice before he had stopped speaking.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Count me in.’

V.v

Lula Pearl’s Last Stand

Lula lost herself amongst the crowds of zombies. Unwashed and sporting torn and blood-stained threads, she could have passed for a zombie herself; she needed only affect a shambling gait and Sirensbane himself wouldn’t have given her a second glance if he went by. Here, under the sea and in the middle of the enemy’s base of operations, Lula felt at one with her people again. So while Kal went after the cause of their affliction, it was Lula’s job to deal with the symptoms, and
somehow
rescue the Islanders from this watery hell.

Right this very moment, Kal would be face to face with Sirensbane. Lula was still amazed that her friend had come this far, and was taking on possibly her most dangerous ever enemy, and with no promise of a reward. It was true that Lula had never offered Kal anything except the thrill of adventure, and whatever opportunities came with it, but she had never imagined in a thousand years that Kal would happily shrug off the sinking of a boatload of treasure … and
still
risk her life taking on Sirensbane. Was she really doing it all for Lula, or for herself?

The passageway Lula was following opened out into a long, low hall. Zombies were loading barrels of napazane onto conveyor belts that carried the barrels up and away through hatches in the rockface. Crates of drugs appeared from other hatches, while several new tunnels exited in all directions. It appeared to be some kind of busy distribution centre. Lula found a raised gangway where she could observe the activity for a few moments. She was looking, of course, for her father, but he was nowhere to be seen.

A slight breeze tickled the back of her neck, and she caught a taste of fresh air. It appeared to be coming from a perforated pipe that ran above the gangway and disappeared down one of the other tunnels. Out of curiosity, and with no better options, Lula followed it.

She found herself under another of the domes. But this one wasn’t home to some sterile, functional loading bay or packing plant. Instead, it housed one of the most jaw-dropping sights Lula had ever laid eyes on.
This
dome was an underwater greenhouse. It was as big as the arboretum in Amaranthium’s Autumn Gardens, but filled with lusher, greener plants that pressed at the glass walls of the dome and tickled the roof with their extremities. The phosphorescent lights were bright overhead, and the heat trapped inside was incredible.

Lula recognised several of the species here: butterfly palms and money plants, bamboo stalks and rubber trees. They were dense with green leaves, and Lula realised then what their purpose was: to provide oxygen for the domes. It was an ingenious solution to the problem of living under the waves, but Lula wasn’t as impressed as she imagined Kal might have been. A jungle torn from the sun wasn’t a jungle at all; it was just a sad shadow of true natural beauty.

She did a circuit of the several paths that led through the trees. There were a handful of zombies milling around, pruning the plants and wheeling barrows of fertiliser about. At the very centre of the dome there was a small pond. A few coconuts from the overhanging palms floated in the pool; Lula bent and picked one out.

She tried to think. If she tied coconuts to the zombies’ arms and legs, and shoved them out an airlock, they’d probably float to the surface pretty quickly.

She laughed to herself. Even if she could find enough nuts, what a game that would be, organising a line of a hundred zombies and fitting them with their flotation devices.

A rustling noise behind her made her jump, and she whirled around, nut held high ready to throw. But it was only a zombie dragging a net of fallen leaves past. She watched it shuffle out of sight. Lula thought it was someone she recognised. A fisherman she used to see around Port Black, perhaps?

What did it matter? In truth there was only one zombie she really wanted to save: her father. But why was that? She barely knew him, after all; she had maybe visited him four times in the ten years since she had left home.

Lula knew why. Guilt; she had run away, and now her father and her people were suffering. It wasn’t her fault, of course, but the guilt came from having spent a decade enjoying herself and getting up to no good, when she could have been doing something far more worthwhile; like helping her father and the other villagers stand up to Republic rule, for a start, let alone being there to resist the storm of terror that Sirensbane had whipped up.

When this was all over, her father safe and Sirensbane dead, perhaps she would take up the offer of being the new governor. And maybe Kal would like to stay with her; they could rebuild the governor’s mansion together, and live in luxury ….

She shook off her daydreams. She had work to do first.

* * *

Lula continued her exploration of the underwater stronghold. In the storerooms, kitchens and workshops, the zombies worked in silence. Half an hour had passed since Kal had left to face Sirensbane, and with every minute that passed, Lula wondered what had happened to her.
Don’t come looking for me!
her friend had ordered. Lula fought back the urge to do exactly that. She tried to focus on her own mission.

In the next dome she entered, accessed by an airlock with metal doors that were at least a foot thick, was an enormous dock the size of a field. Floating in it was a nautilus submarine as big as a two-storey building. Lula stepped to the edge of the dock and looked down; the water was shallow and there was a flat rock bottom. The pool didn’t lead out to the ocean. That explained why they hadn’t seen this entrance from below; but then how then did this giant submarine get inside the dome?

She looked up at the glass roof. This particular dome didn’t have an even pattern of hexagons, but rather was divided into two halves either side of a long join that arched across the circumference of the hemisphere. Of course! But where were the controls? Lula remembered—she had seen a great control wheel back in the airlock she had just passed through. No wonder the doors had been so thick: they had to be
watertight
!

There was a hatch on the side the giant sub, and a ramp up and in. Lula poked her head inside: the wide open bay clearly marked the sub out as a transport vehicle. Stepping outside again, she caught a pair of zombies by the shoulders and ushered them up the ramp. They obeyed without complaint, and even sat down on benches when they got inside.

Lula turned a few more zombies in the direction of the sub, and pretty soon others were following them, falling into line like sheep. Soon Lula had a queue of passengers that stretched all the way out of the dome and back to the room with the conveyor belts.
All too easy
, she thought, praying that Sirensbane wouldn’t suddenly turn up and demand to know what the hell was going on!

She counted them off as they boarded. After about a hundred, it started to get pretty full, but if she shoved hard she could probably get a few more on. First though, she ran to the cockpit and made sure that the ballast was set for full buoyancy. Then she went back to the crowded cargo bay, ushered the stragglers aboard, and then pulled up the ramp from the inside.

One more thing to do: exit the sub via the pilot’s hatch. The zombies pressed in on her from all sides, but she didn’t feel any danger anymore as she pushed her way through them. They were
her
people, and soon they would be safe and free.

Back in the dome, a handful of latecomers had ambled in. Lula turned them around and herded them back to the airlock. ‘No room, guys. I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘We’ll go look for another way out, okay?’

A voice suddenly spoke out of nowhere, making Lula flinch. It was emanating from grills in the pipework overhead:

‘Attention all workers. There has been a security breach. Unauthorised personnel have entered the facility. Your orders are to kill any intruders on sight. I repeat:
kill intruders on sight
.’

Lula swore. She hurried to the dome’s exit, but one of the zombies stepped in front of her and groped for her. She punched it in the face and it fell away. Another had grabbed her by the belt of her trousers, and she had to undo her buckle to break free.

The zombies were strong but slow, and once Lula was clear she rushed to the airlock and secured the thick metal door. ‘Sorry, guys,’ she said, as she spun the large wheel labelled
FLOOD
. The water level inside the dome immediately began to rise. The zombies who wouldn’t fit on board the sub were going to drown, but there was nothing Lula could do about that ; she couldn’t possibly save all of them.

The sub floated up as the water filled the dome, until it was bobbing around near the roof. Lula pulled on the large lever labelled
DOORS
. Hydraulic machinery groaned, and Lula watched through a porthole as the dome split in two and parted to allow the sub to escape.

She saluted the sub in farewell, then turned to head back into the complex. All she could do now was to keep searching for another way out for herself and Kal … if Kal ever turned up. Sirensbane knew that they were here now, which meant that Kal hadn’t managed to take him out by surprise.

Lula didn’t dare dwell on the possibilities, though. She had her own immediate problems: almost every way she turned, she was faced with groups of zombies staggering towards her, grasping arms outstretched. She kept moving, taking turns at random, trying to get ahead of them so she could find somewhere to hide and catch her breath.

She hurtled down a long narrow corridor, rock walls closing in on either side. Luckily, the way ahead was clear, and the zombies behind her had been left far behind. If she could make it as far as the intersection ahead, she might just be able to lose her pursuers.