Ghosts of Empire Read online

  The room was tiled white, floor and ceiling, and smelled of carbolic. It reminded him of the hospital. There were three plain wooden chairs, a small, mismatched occasional table, a trolley—evidently designed for ferrying unconscious or immobilized victims to and fro—and a bizarre, ungainly contraption in the corner that had the shape and form of an eight-foot tall man.

  It was, Gabriel presumed, a medical automaton of some kind. Its chassis had been constructed from a series of brass struts and complex ball sockets to resemble a humanoid skeleton, only unlike a human being, the machine was equipped with a pair of secondary arms that had been affixed to additional shoulder joints in its back. These additional arms terminated in an array of vicious-looking medical implements—scalpels, drills and syringes.

  The machine’s torso had been paneled with sheets of polished, beaten brass, and housed—Gabriel presumed—the mechanisms that powered it.

  It was standing in the corner, deactivated and still. He eyed it warily, half expecting it to stir in his presence. Its face was a blank polished mask, with two inset glass lenses that clearly served as its eyes. They gleamed in the low light, and left Gabriel with the unsettling impression that the machine was watching him.

  He stuffed the handkerchief back into his pocket and readied his gun. He could hear the low mumble of voices coming from somewhere along the passage. He presumed that was where he’d find Rutherford.

  The challenge was going to be getting him out of there. He wasn’t going to be much help in a fight, and the likelihood was that Gabriel was going to have to carry him. That narrowed their options. There were at least three of the enemy agents—the woman and the two men—plus whoever had already been in the house. He could discount the old butler, but the others we’re most likely trained agents, and were likely to put up a good fight. They were on home turf, too, with all the advantages that offered.

  He was going to have to put them down, quickly and efficiently, and then effect the extraction. Without his rocket canisters he was going to be slow, too, so locating the keys to the agents’ van was also a priority. He’d taken the precaution of strapping on a pair of small ankle boosters beneath his suit, but they wouldn’t be enough to give him any proper lift, especially with the additional weight—they were designed simply to give him an advantage if he found himself cornered, enough to surprise his attacker and allow him to get away.

  He crossed the room, heading toward the mouth of the passage, but stopped short, sensing motion from the corner of his eye. Was there someone else in the room? A guard he’d missed during his initial sweep, waiting in the darkness to shoot him in the back?

  He turned quickly, brandishing his Luger, but the room remained empty. There was no one lurking in the shadows behind him. He caught his breath. He was clearly feeling jumpy.

  And then the automaton moved its head, and Gabriel almost cried out in surprise.

  The lenses in its mask swiveled, spinning in their mounts. The head turned, creaking loudly in the otherwise silent room. It was looking at him. Cogs whirred, and the machine adjusted itself, in a gesture that made it look as if it were flexing its shoulders, stretching as if roused from a long slumber. It took a tentative step forward, its heavy foot thudding on the tiles.

  Gabriel took a step back, keeping his gun level.

  The machine straightened up, raising its lower left arm and opening and closing its fist, so that the scalpel blades glinted in the reflected light. It took another thunderous step toward him.

  The thing was huge. It lurched closer, and Gabriel kept pace with it, wary that its strangely elongated arms might lash out at any moment. A single blow from the scalpel-encrusted fist would be enough to put him down, permanently.

  Hissing steam escaped from a series of vents on the machine’s back, and trunk-like pistons in its thighs sighed with every step. It was backing him into the opposite corner.

  He quickly weighed his options. There was still time to duck down the passage in search of Rutherford—but then the thing might come after him, and hemmed in from both directions, he’d have little to no chance of making it out alive. Even if it didn’t pursue him, there was every chance he’d have to come back this way to make it out, only to find his escape route blocked.

  He was going to have to stop it. He hefted his gun, taking aim for its head, and then hesitated. If he fired it now, he’d bring the other agents running, and lose the element of surprise. The odds were already against him.

  He cast around for anything else he could use as a weapon. There was nothing but the wooden chairs. They were hardly going to stop a machine of this size. His only hope was to get behind it, see if he could find a way to damage the vents on its back, or thrust something into its internal mechanisms to jam them. If he could slow it or deactivate it somehow, he could buy himself some time.

  The automaton lurched forward suddenly, taking two successive steps, and then swung out with both of its right arms. Instinct took over, and Gabriel threw himself to the ground, hitting the porcelain tiles hard, and rolling. The machine’s foot came down where his head had been a moment earlier, and he scrabbled hurriedly to his feet, the heels of his hands smarting from the impact. He’d lost his gun in the fall, and he searched for it desperately, before realizing it had skittered across the floor to the other side of the room. If he made a run for it now, he’d be leaving himself exposed to those flailing scalpels.

  Elsewhere in the house he heard Rutherford screaming again. He was running out of time. He had to stop the machine, and he had to do it now.

  It was coming at him again, this time jabbing at his chest with a fist of dripping syringes—filled, he presumed, with some manner of deadly toxin. He leapt back, almost colliding with the gurney he’d seen earlier. He felt his way around it, swinging it between himself and the machine to form a makeshift barrier. The machine’s eyes spun as it tracked his every movement, the scalpel fingers of its right hands twitching nervously.

  Gabriel backed away, his hands held out to either side, searching for one of the chairs. His fingers struck something hard, and he twisted and grabbed it, swinging the chair up before him and wielding it as a lion tamer might, warding off the mechanical man with his makeshift wooden shield. It wouldn’t withstand a direct hit, but it might fend off a glancing blow and give him time to recover his Luger. He might yet need the explosive rounds he’d planted in its chamber.

  He jabbed forward with the chair, attempting a feint, but the machine only responded by chopping down with its upper right arm. Gabriel’s arms juddered under the force of the impact and the chair sheared in two, sending splinters showering into the air, and causing him to stagger back, face averted. All that was left in his hands were two broken spurs. The machine stomped forward, crushing the remains of the seat underfoot, and Gabriel kept pace with it, circling out of its reach.

  He glanced at the splinters of wood in his hands. The stake on the left still seemed relatively sturdy. He saw the machine coming in, swiping two of its arms in a wide circle aimed at taking his head from his shoulders—and dived. He struck the floor by its feet and half rolled, half skidded across the tiles. He leapt to his feet, the wooden stakes still clutched in his fists. He was behind the thing, now, and as it started to turn, he thrust one of the stakes down through the frame of its left leg, wedging it so that it interfered with the movement of the piston.

  The machine stumbled, and then raised its leg, trying to shake the wooden baton free, but it was firmly stuck. Confused, the machine slammed its foot down upon the tiles, and then raised it again, as the piston misfired noisily, steam hissing as the pressure began to mount.

  Hurriedly, Gabriel grabbed the remaining stake in both hands and thrust it into one of the vents on the machine’s back, leveraging it with as much strength as he could muster, until he felt the satisfying crack of internal gears. The machine emitted a shrill whine as the cogs in its lower left shoulder failed to find purchase, and the limb swung uselessly idle by its side. That, then, was th
e syringes out of commission.

  Gabriel stepped back, edging toward his discarded Luger. If he could stay behind the machine, maybe he could find a way to disable its other arms. He glanced across the room at the nearest chair, and the mess of splintered wood upon the ground. If he could fashion another stake…

  He looked up just in time to see the machine was pivoting at the waist, its legs remaining firmly planted on the tiles as it twisted its torso through a hundred and eighty degrees, swinging around with its two right arms outstretched in a wide, windmill attack.

  Realizing that he was already too late to avoid the blow, Gabriel threw himself back, narrowly avoiding the swinging scalpels but taking a glancing blow to the shoulder.

  He went down, lifted from his feet by the force of the blow, thudding hard into the tiled wall and sliding, dazed, to the floor. He blinked frantically, fighting back the tide of dizziness and nausea that threatened to overwhelm him. If he blacked out now, he was as good as dead.

  With a roar, Gabriel forced his legs to move, propelling him out of the way of a second blow that cracked the tiles where he’d been slumped, sending plumes of dust billowing into the air.

  He landed heavily on the floor, inches from his Luger. Blearily, his head throbbing, he snatched it up, brandishing it at the machine, his aim wavering. There were eight explosive rounds in the magazine—enough, he hoped, to bring the thing down.

  It was lumbering forward, dragging its inert leg, readying itself for another strike.

  Gabriel couldn’t wait any longer. The noise of the fight had probably already alerted the others to his presence. He squeezed the trigger.

  The first explosive round detonated like a thunderclap in the small, tiled room, punching a hole through the machine’s upper right shoulder, and spraying hot, glowing fragments against the wall behind it.

  The machine, momentarily forced back by the ferocity of the blow, came on again. Gabriel fired again, this time opening a smoldering cavity in its chest. A third whistled past its head, blackening the tiles behind it.

  The stench of cordite was sharp in Gabriel’s nostrils as he slid back, keeping his weapon level. He could barely believe that the thing was still going. It was shambling now, its internal mechanisms grinding, its movements jerky and imprecise. Its scalpels still flashed, however, deadly and intent, as it pulled its arm back, readying itself for the killing blow.

  Gabriel fired again, and kept on firing until the weapon stopped discharging in his hand. The roar of the detonating rounds left his ears ringing, the flare of the explosions causing flashing stains upon his retinas.

  The machine, its upper half now nothing but a twisted hulk of malformed brass, took one final step, and then toppled forward, slamming into the tiles by Gabriel’s feet. Black smoke curled from the wreckage, causing him to hack and splutter.

  Gabriel dragged himself away from the carcass of the ruined machine, until his back was pressed against the nearest wall. Then, wincing from a sharp pain in the side of his head, he held onto the wall as he dragged himself to his feet. He was still feeling dizzy from the blow he’d taken, and he knew with utter certainty that the fighting was far from over.

  Running footsteps sounded in the passageway. He pressed himself back against the wall, still clutching his Luger.

  The footsteps skidded to a halt on the threshold of the room.

  “Jesus!” exclaimed a woman. “Look at it.”

  “Careful,” replied a man, levelly. “Whoever did this might still be in there, and they’ve come prepared for a fight.”

  So there were two of them. Gabriel’s luck was still with him—for now.

  “Alright. You take the right, I’ll take the left,” said the man. Two figures slipped into the room. Gabriel tensed. The man was coming in his direction. He traced the man’s outline through the pall of smoke.

  Not yet. Gabriel fought down the impulse to act. The man took another step toward him. His head was turned in the other direction. Gabriel couldn’t really get a good look at him, but he guessed it had to be one of the men he’d seen unloading Rutherford from the van earlier. He was carrying a gun.

  He took another step forward, turning his head—and Gabriel leapt out, swinging the butt of his Luger, and clubbed him across the side of the head.

  He went down hard, wailing in pain, but Gabriel was already on the move, circling around the broken remnants of the automaton, his eyes fixed on the woman. She’d seen him move, heard her colleague go down, and she was tracking him with the barrel of her gun as he moved.

  “Who are you?” she said. “What do you want?”

  Gabriel didn’t respond. He figured his continued silence might unnerve her and throw her off balance.

  “Answer me,” she insisted, “or I’ll shoot.”

  “You’re going to shoot whether I answer or not,” he said, his voice level.

  She squeezed the trigger and he ducked to the left. The bullet ricocheted off the wall and rattled harmlessly down the passageway.

  “Come out where I can see you, with your hands up.”

  Gabriel smiled. If he did, he’d be riddled with bullets in seconds.

  The smoke was beginning to clear. A minute or two longer and she’d have a clean shot. It was time to make a break for it. If he could get to Rutherford, maybe he could find a route out through the house.

  He turned, straight into the path of a fist.

  Gabriel stumbled back, as the man came at him again, going low with a second gut punch. Gabriel doubled over, dropping his useless gun and shielding his face with his hands as the man raised his knee, trying to catch Gabriel before he had chance to straighten up. Gabriel twisted, swinging back, connecting with the man’s ribs. The guy was made of stern stuff—Gabriel had given him a hell of a whack around the head with the Luger, a drop that would have put a lesser man down for an hour.

  The man came in with another swing, and Gabriel feinted left, before ducking right, causing the man to punch the wall and howl painfully as his knuckles crunched against the tiles. A swift knee to the man’s balls caused him to drop to one knee, and Gabriel used him as cover, stooping to sweep up a fragment of the broken automaton to use as a makeshift blade.

  He pressed it against the side of the man’s throat as the woman circled them both, her gun brandished at arm’s length.

  “Drop it,” she said.

  Gabriel pressed the metal shard a little more firmly into the man’s flesh, until it pricked the skin, drawing a glistening bead of blood. He tried to twist his head away, but Gabriel kept the pressure on. “I don’t think so,” he said. Slowly, the man raised his arms in surrender.

  “I will shoot you,” said the woman.

  Gabriel heard footsteps from the passage behind him. He didn’t dare turn to look, but he knew the game was up. There was no way he was going to make it out of here alive, not now. He’d failed Rutherford, and he’d failed Ginny, too.

  “Gabriel. Stop this. Now.” The voice was instantly familiar, if a little weary. “And you, Regina. Lower your weapon.”

  “Rutherford?” He twisted to look. Rutherford was standing in the mouth of the passageway, leaning heavily against the wall. He looked exhausted. His hair was mussed and damp with sweat, and there were dark rings beneath his eyes, but the color had already begun to return to his cheeks and his eyes were bright and alert. He was wearing a loose-fitting bathrobe, patterned in green paisley. “It’s alright, Gabriel. They’re friends.”

  Gabriel glanced from the man to the woman, and then cautiously lowered the metal shard. He took a step back, giving himself room, just in case the others decided to ignore Rutherford and come for him again. “They don’t seem very friendly.”

  “You know this man?” said the woman.

  “Yes. His name is Gabriel Cross,” said Rutherford. “He and I have an understanding.”

  The woman made a dismissive noise, but she lowered her own weapon, sliding it back into a holster on her hip. The man was still down on his knees, rubbi
ng his throat. He didn’t look at all happy about the sudden shift in circumstances. Gabriel could see his jaw working back and forth as he ground his teeth in frustration.

  “Gabriel helped me out in New York last year,” said Rutherford. “I owe him my life. We’d arranged to have dinner tonight while he’s holidaying over here, that’s all.”

  “Does dinner often involve blowing up expensive equipment and attacking members of the British Secret Service?” said the man, finally getting to his feet. His voice was a dry croak.

  “British Secret Service?” echoed Gabriel. “So you’re…?”

  “Yes,” said Rutherford. “We’re colleagues.”

  “Then why did you bust him out of the hospital like that? He needed medical attention. And what’s with all the screaming?” Gabriel locked eyes with Rutherford, searching for any hidden message, any sign that the man was in trouble and was stalling for time, but all he received in return was a weak smile.

  “We’ll explain,” said Rutherford. “Over a nice, calm cup of tea.”

  “Alright,” said Gabriel, as he wearily dropped the metal shard to the floor. “Now that’s much more like the British welcome I was expecting.”

  FIVE

  “You’re with the CIA, I presume?” said the woman, whom Rutherford had introduced as Regina Richards. She was attractive, in a fiery kind of way. Her sharp blue eyes kept flitting from Rutherford to Gabriel; he could see she was far from comfortable with the situation. She was sitting directly across from Gabriel, her legs folded, her hand within easy reach of her weapon. “We’re going to need to see your papers.”

  They were sitting in a drawing room on the ground floor, and the butler whom Gabriel had encountered on the doorstep earlier was—somewhat reluctantly—serving them hot tea in little china cups. The room had a sense of faded grandeur about it; it had once been plush and welcoming but had faded over decades of use. Despite the valet’s best efforts to keep the dust at bay, there was little he could do about the worn carpets and faded leather of the armchairs. Gabriel imagined that little had changed here since before the war, as if this relic of another era was somehow being held together by the sheer willpower of the butler alone. It was utterly at odds with the gleaming modernity of the medical equipment below stairs. Or at least, it had been, until Gabriel had emptied eight explosive rounds into it.