Aftershock (13 page)

‘Poor bugger,' Pete said, opening the visor of his helmet. Mai did the same then crouched down to inspect the body. Turning the corpse over onto its side, she and Pete both saw the wounds along the victim's back and legs. ‘I reckon he was badly hurt by some sort of explosion, but tried to get out through this door. He must've lost his mind. There's no way out here, even if he could have got through the locked door.'

‘Maybe he thought a sub was still docked.'

‘Yeah, it's possible, I guess,' Mai replied, standing up.

The light from their helmets lit up part of a wide corridor. The floor was carpeted. There were paintings on the walls, all of them misaligned. It was eerily quiet. All they could hear was the creaking of metal straining against metal.

‘We have to get some power on,' Mai said. ‘There must be an emergency lighting circuit.'

Pete tapped the screen on his suit and pulled up the schematic of the hotel. Scrolling through the various images, he finally found the electrical systems diagram. ‘Looks like there's an emergency backup. As you'd expect. But it should've come on automatically.'

‘Obviously failed. There has to be a manual override. Can you find the access point?'

Pete tapped at the screen again. ‘Follow me.'

He led them along the corridor, took a left and then a right. The passageway had been tastefully decorated. There were recessed lights in the ceiling, ornate light shades spaced along each wall of the corridor. The carpet, now soaked, was originally a plush red. This, Pete reflected, was the first view visitors had of the inside of the Neptune. It would have to make a good impression even if it was simply a connection from the dock to the main body of the hotel.

On the right stood a door. A sign read ‘MAINTENANCE: AUTHORISED PERSONNEL ONLY'. It was locked. Mai stepped up to it and lifted her gloved hand. From her wristband a tiny tube extended – the business end of a vector-laser, a device that fired a beam produced by a high field-intensity laser built into the cybersuit. The beam width and power could be finely adjusted, allowing the vector-laser to perform a wide range of tasks. Mai touched her wrist monitor and a narrow blue beam hit the lock. It vaporised. The door swung out and Pete stepped in.

It was a cupboard, the walls covered with metal conduits and junction boxes. Wires led around the boxes. He tugged at the cover of a box close to the door. Inside was a series of switches and relays. Pete studied his screen, then looked at the circuits in front of him. He tapped his monitor and, using a cursor on the screen, turned the power of the vector-laser at his wrist to ‘minimum'.

‘Broken connection. There, see?' Pete said to Mai. ‘Just needs a gentle touch.' An ultrafine, soft blue-green beam struck the circuit board. He moved his hand slightly and the broken connection between two printed circuits was sealed immediately. Switching off the laser, Pete stepped back and closed the lid of the junction box. Beside it was a switch that had flicked to ‘off' when the circuit malfunctioned. Pete moved it up and the lights came on.

They stepped out into the hall now flooded with light. ‘Eureka!' Mai exclaimed.

‘What's that?'

‘What?' Mai strained to hear. There was a faint sound coming from along the passage towards the submarine dock.

‘Footsteps,' Pete said. Then his expression darkened. ‘And what sounds like the safety catch coming off a weapon. You wait here, Mai.'

She nodded and Pete walked slowly along the corridor, retracing their steps back towards the dock. He could hear the shuffling of feet. The rustling of fabric. Irregular breathing. One person. Someone nervous.

Pete approached the corner slowly and edged round.

‘Stop!' someone yelled. It was the hotel bellboy. He looked about 17. His red uniform was torn and stained and he had a cut across his forehead. He had blond, almost white hair, cropped short. It was matted with blood. He was holding a taser he had lifted from a dead security man, clasping it with both hands, his knuckles white. Pete could see the boy was shaking.

‘We're here to help,' Pete said calmly.

‘Oh yeah, and me old mum was the Prime Minister.' The boy's voice was pure cockney. He kept the taser trained on Pete.

‘What's your name, son?'

‘What's it to you?'

‘I told you. We're here to help.' Pete took a step forward.

‘No closer.'

Pete stopped 6 metres away from the kid. ‘We're not a threat.'

‘We? Who's that? Where you from? Up north by the sounds of ya.'

Pete couldn't resist a brief smile. ‘I'm a Geordie, son. And you sound like the original cockney sparrow.'

‘Yeah, and so what if I am?' The boy's expression was a blend of fear and pride.

Pete was about to reply when he caught a sudden movement behind the boy. Mai appeared a few metres away. She took a step towards him, plucked the taser from the kid's hands and grabbed his left arm, pulling it hard behind his back.

‘Ow!' the boy yelped.

Pete took two steps towards him.

‘Oh fuckin' 'ell,' the kid squealed. ‘Okay, make it quick, mister.'

‘What you talking about, lad?' Pete flicked a glance to Mai. ‘Let him go. Poor sod's terrified.'

Mai released her grip on the boy's arm and slipped the taser into her belt. The boy looked around, obviously weighing up his chances of escape.

‘Listen,' Pete said, extending a hand. ‘Let's start again, shall we?'

The boy looked at Pete's palm. ‘Who are you?' he said.

‘My name's Peter Sherringham, and this is Maiko Buchanan. We're part of E-Force, a rescue...'

‘E-Force? Fuck me! I've seen you in the papers. Wow! I see your badges now.'

‘Okay. So, we're good?' Mai asked.

‘Yeah! Shit, we need you, I can tell ya. Place is a fucking mess.'

‘What's your name?'

‘Me? I'm Archie Barnet. Don't like Arch, just Archie.'

‘Okay, Archie. Have you seen anyone else?'

‘Yeah, there're a few of us up in Reception. Some of 'em are buggered up proper. I've just got this scratch.' And he tapped his forehead.

‘I guess the elevators are out?' Pete said.

‘Yeah, but there're stairs. I know every nook and cranny of this place.'

‘Well then, Archie, you'd better lead the way.'

Archie took them along the corridor to a wide door marked ‘SERVICE STAIRS'. The sound of their footfalls echoed around the concrete walls. The stairs were narrow and spiralled up three flights to another door labelled ‘RECEPTION'. It opened onto a narrow passageway. Mai and Pete followed Archie and they came out into the vast void of the main Reception of the Neptune Hotel.

Even after being shaken to its foundations, the place was still magnificent. The sculpture of Neptune stood imperiously, undamaged amid piles of debris. The four giant chandeliers that had been suspended above the sculpture had not fared so well. Each had crashed to the ground, shattering into tens of thousands of pieces. The white marble floor was covered with glass and slithers of metal. Two bodies lay in the wreckage, a man and a woman, each wearing a red uniform. The man's neck had snapped and his head was twisted at an obscene angle. The woman lay on her front, a field of glass shards protruded from her back; the deep red of her blood had soaked her uniform.

Archie, his face drained pale, looked at Mai and Pete. ‘Yes, Trevor and Margo. They worked at the desk. I checked them earlier, but they're dead.' His voice cracked with emotion. Turning, he picked a way across the carpet of glass towards the curved dark wood counter. A computer screen lay on the floor immediately in front of the desk, the screen smashed. Papers and small office items were scattered everywhere. As they approached, they could see the head and forearms of another body protruded from under the end of the counter.

Mai arrived first and went down on one knee. The victim was another woman, young, perhaps early twenties, her blonde hair wet with blood. A great gash ran across her face. Mai checked for a pulse. ‘Natalia,' Archie said from where he was standing slightly behind Pete. ‘It was her twenty-first today. We had a little party round the back there.' He pointed to a door close to the desk. ‘While the posh do was goin' on in Gamma. We 'ad champagne and all...' He suddenly burst into tears, sobbing like a toddler.

Mai stood up and walked over to the boy, placing an arm around his shoulders. She let him sob for a few moments then she said, ‘Archie. I know this is hard, but we really need your help. You said there were other survivors.'

He stopped crying as suddenly as he had begun and wiped his eyes with a grimy sleeve. Straightening his jacket, he cricked his neck theatrically. ‘I'm fine,' he said unconvincingly. Then he cleared his throat. ‘We 'ave a job to do. This way.'

He led them over to the other side of the desk and along a wide corridor that took them into another narrower passageway. At the end, a door stood ajar. Archie pushed on it.

There were four people in the room. They were all members of staff, three men and a woman, still in their red uniforms. The woman and two of the men lay on seat cushions on the floor, the fourth, a younger man, perhaps in his late twenties, was sitting in a chair, his arm bandaged from elbow to wrist. He looked alarmed as the two members of E-Force walked in.

‘Don't worry, Ricky. Friends,' Archie announced to the man.

Mai walked over to the injured people lying on the floor and moved from one to the other. The men were unconscious. They were middle aged, each with gold stripes on the sleeves of their uniforms. After checking vital signs, Mai removed an electronic medscanner from a shoulder bag. The device, the shape and size of a ballpoint pen, bleeped and she surveyed the readings on her wrist monitor. She gave each of the men a shot of powerful painkiller and then moved on to the woman. Her face was bleached white and smeared with blood from a cut on her chin. The left side of her face was blackened by a bruise. She flinched as Mai approached.

‘It's okay,' she said. ‘What's your name?'

For a moment, the woman couldn't speak, then she cleared her throat and swallowed hard. ‘Sandra ... er, Sandra Rimmer.'

Mai ran the medscanner slowly across the woman's forehead, down each side of her face and neck and over her chest, checking the monitor as she went. ‘You'll be fine,' she said. ‘Head trauma, but not serious.'

Mai stood up, walked over to the man called Ricky and repeated the process. When she had finished, she strode across the room. ‘Two of them have concussion,' she said quietly to Pete. ‘One has two broken ribs. He'll be in a lot of pain when he regains consciousness. The guy in the chair, Ricky, has a fractured ulna. They all have glass lacerations, but nothing life-threatening. I've given them shots. You did all this, Archie?' Mai added, turning to the bellboy.

‘St John's Ambulance Service, Leytonstone branch,' he said. ‘Always thought it'd come in 'andy one day. I got the cushions from a couple of sofas. It's the staff recreational area through there.' He pointed to a doorway. ‘Well buggered though. Managed to salvage the First Aid kit, the kettle, of course, and a couple of other things.'

Mai smiled. ‘You did very well.'

One of the two unconscious men opened his eyes. Archie saw him looking at Mai and Pete, clearly terrified. The man gasped and clutched at his side. He looked horribly pale.

Archie turned to the four injured staff members. ‘This is Maiko and Peter,' he said, waving towards the new arrivals. ‘E-Force, would ya believe?' Then he turned to Mai. ‘Ricky Bellamy,' he said, pointing to the man in the chair. ‘Worked on the main desk with...' He pulled a face and turned to the three people on the floor. ‘James Hornsby,' he said indicating the man with the broken ribs. ‘Chief Concierge. Next to 'im is Hugh Gebbly, Assistant Chief Concierge, and Sandra ... well, you've been introduced.'

‘What's happened?' James Hornsby said. He was perhaps 50, heavily built, with greased-back hair dyed uniformly black. At first glance, he looked like an early 1970s Elvis, about the time the singer was turning to fat. ‘We heard what sounded like a blast. The whole place shook and all hell broke loose. It's a terrorist attack, right?' he winced again. ‘God Almighty ... my side.'

‘You've broken three ribs, James,' Mai said. ‘But I've given you some powerful painkillers. They should start to work soon.'

‘To be honest, we don't know what happened,' Pete said, looking around at the faces in front of him. ‘It wasn't a bomb. Or at least, we're pretty sure it wasn't. But the hotel has been very badly damaged.'

‘Dome Gamma?' Sandra said. There was an edge of panic in her voice.

‘Not good,' Pete said. ‘We know there are survivors, but not many.'

James stared at Pete, the others looked away, each lost in their own thoughts.

‘So what do we do now?' James asked. ‘You were going for a reccie, Archie.'

‘Yeah, I did. Can't say it helped much.'

‘We've run scans of the hotel structure,' Mai said. ‘This dome is the least badly damaged, so you should stay put for the moment. We've got the docking bay dry, but we can't hook up our subs to the hotel.'

‘What about the universal dock in Beta?' Ricky Bellamy asked.

‘Tried that first. It's too unstable.'

‘The emergency subs in Beta. Surely they would be a better option?'

‘It looks like the way to Beta from here is extremely hazardous,' Pete replied. ‘But, if we can't use the dock here, we'll be forced to try the Beta subs to get you out.'

Ricky Bellamy nodded.

‘So,' Pete went on. ‘What we're going to do is create a connector between the end of the dock we came through and our sub.'

‘How on earth you going to do that?' James Hornsby asked.

‘Don't worry about that,' Mai interrupted. ‘We have some interesting materials that can be moulded any way we like. If we can get you guys out, Pete and I will go on to the other domes. Do you know if there are any other survivors in this dome, Archie?'

The boy shook his head. ‘I ain't seen no one, but I can't be sure.'

‘I'll run a scan,' Mai said, and glanced at Pete before heading for the door to the passageway back to Reception.

‘So, we have to get over to the dock, right?' Hugh Gebbly said, watching Mai's retreating back.

Pete nodded and flicked on his comms. ‘Mark?'

‘Pete.'

‘We've found five survivors in Dome Alpha. No serious injuries. Mai and I think the best plan would be to use Morphadin so we can dock the
Narcis
with the hotel. Now we've got the dock dry it should work well. Mai will go up to the surface with them and I'll press on. She'll rejoin me later.'

‘You got enough Morphadin on the sub?'

‘I'm pretty sure. I loaded some extra supplies just before we left the Big Mac. I had a feeling we'd need it.'

‘Good. Well, it's a plan.'

‘Mai's just gone back to Reception. She's going to run a scan of the dome to see if there's anyone else alive.'

‘Okay, Pete. Keep in touch ... and good luck.'

Pete turned to the five staff members and was about to explain the plan when the room shook violently. The lights went out. Sandra screamed in the dark. The lights stuttered on, then off, then on again. A roaring sound filled the room. There was a loud boom from beyond the passageway. It came from the direction of the Reception. The floor shook. Sandra screamed again. The rumbling stopped abruptly. Pete heard a sound like swishing swords. It was from close by. He span around and saw a metal beam come crashing through the ceiling. He dived to his left and the beam missed him by centimetres. Rolling onto his side, he crawled under a table close to where Ricky Bellamy had been sitting. The man was nowhere to be seen.

The table shook and Pete heard the thud of a heavy object crashing onto the table top above him. He covered his head with his arms. A second, heavier object slammed into the table top, knocking it aside. Pete whirled around and a piece of concrete the size of a football flew straight at his face.