Ironheart

by Allan Boroughs

  ‘No, India,’ he said, ‘I am too heavy for you.’

  Her answer was to plant her feet either side of the door frame and grip him tighter. She cried out, afraid she would be dragged out of the door by his immense weight. Then Bulldog was there too, pulling hard and, in the next moment, Calculus had gained a handhold and hauled himself back inside.

  Bulldog barely had time to jam the door shut before they ploughed through the steel gates of the rig yard. There was a screeching of metal on metal and they were all hurled violently around the little mess room.

  The rig picked up a burst of speed and accelerated down a wide forest track. Tashar turned on the forward beams and steered expertly into a tree-lined valley, where she throttled back. The noise of the engine dropped to a tolerable level.

  Bulldog sat in the centre of the room in a puddle of red gravy and potatoes, clutching the trembling Rat. India nursed her arms, which felt as though they had been nearly torn from their sockets.

  ‘That was really very foolish, India,’ said Calculus, wiping goulash from his visor. ‘If I had fallen you would have been dragged to your death.’

  ‘Well, you’re welcome,’ she said huffily.

  The android sighed. ‘I know you meant well, India. But I am quite used to being regarded as expendable.’

  ‘Not by me. You’re the last of your kind, remember? That makes you special.’

  He looked at her for several seconds. ‘In that case, thank you for saving my life.’

  ‘That’s OK,’ she said. ‘I guess it makes us even now.’

  Bulldog clapped the android on the back. ‘Not bad, metal man,’ he said, ‘not bad at all.’ Then he slipped back into the captain’s chair. ‘All right! If everyone is finally on board, let’s put some serious distance between us and the Company before they realize what just happened!’

  CHAPTER 13

  THE TESLAGRAPH

  Sid the Kid clenched and unclenched his fists as he considered the wide swathe of damage left by The Beautiful Game. Silas and Cripps stood behind him, pleased that, for once, they were not the object of Sid’s anger.

  ‘So are you saying, not one damn Company rig gave chase to these pirates, Commander? Ain’t that what my pa pays you for?’

  The Commander, a lean and hard man made tough from thirty years of working in the wilderness, was afraid of no one. Nevertheless, something in this boy’s eyes reminded him of a starving wolf he had once encountered out on the tundra. ‘With respect,’ he said, ‘all of our vessels are being overhauled in preparation for departure tomorrow. The specific orders of your father, sir.’

  Sid bared his teeth. ‘You lie!’ He pulled the pistol from his belt and took a step forwards. The Commander stiffened slightly but stood his ground.

  ‘Don’t take my word for it. Why don’t you ask him yourself?’ He nodded to a neat-looking man who was carefully carrying a wooden box as though it was filled with fine china.

  Sid frowned and his two sidekicks crowded closer to get a better look.

  ‘Whad’s daht?’ said Cripps, staring at the box. He had two black eyes and a wad of cotton wool stuffed up each nostril. There was a thick white sticking plaster strapped across the bridge of his nose.

  ‘It’s a portable Teslagraph,’ said the Commander. ‘One of Dr Cirenkov’s discoveries. The Director had the foresight to install them in all of the Company rigs so he can stay in touch with his fleet.’

  The man opened the lid to reveal a delicate pair of headphones and an ivory dial with fine black markings. He made subtle movements of the dial, as though tuning a musical instrument. The box crackled and made a sound like the sea rushing over gravel.

  Sid squinted suspiciously at it. ‘What’s this? My pa wouldn’t waste his time on that dumb contraption.’

  The Director’s voice rang out from the hissing box. ‘Damn your stupidity, boy! You wouldn’t recognize a useful piece of technology if it bit you in the backside! Now, tell me how a band of half-witted pirates managed to escape from my own rig yard.’

  Silas and Cripps clutched each other at the sound of Stone’s voice, as if he might materialize from the box at any moment.

  Sid flushed red with the shame of being chastised in front of his men. ‘S’not my fault, Pa.’ He stooped to speak into a metal grille on the front of the box. ‘This dumb-wit Commander was too busy taking his rig to pieces to chase them. D’you want me to shoot him, Pa?’

  ‘I know where the fault lies, boy!’ came the voice. ‘It was you that let ’em slip through your hands. There are times I think I should have drowned you at birth!’

  ‘It weren’t my f-fault, Pa. That’s not f-fair!’

  ‘Fair don’t come into it, boy,’ roared Stone. ‘You’re a waste of space and always will be. Fortunately I have other ways to find that pirate rig. Now you stay put until I get there. If you want to do something useful, see what you can find out about The Beautiful Game, who they spoke to, their regular stopovers, anything useful. D’you hear?’

  ‘Yes, Pa.’

  ‘Good, I’ll be there as soon as I’ve finished my business in Angel Town. Please resist the urge to shoot anyone until I get there.’

  The voice clicked off and the static hiss returned. Sid thought he caught a faint smile on the face of the Commander. ‘What’re you finding so funny? My pa said I can’t shoot you tonight, but there’s always tomorrow Now why don’t you go and put your rig back together so it’s ready for my pa when he gets here?’

  The Commander clicked his heels smartly, then walked off into the night air while Sid returned to staring at the broken fence and the darkness beyond. He clutched the butt of his gun until his knuckles whitened. A vein in his temple throbbed painfully. It was at times like this that he felt his anger was a wild animal that might consume him and that if he gave into it, the part of him that was Sid might disappear and never come back again. Fighting to control his breathing, he slowly relaxed his grip on the gun. Soon he became aware that Cripps was still hovering at his shoulder.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Ethcuse me, sir,’ honked Cripps, ‘bud dere’s a man here do see you. Says he’s god information, bud he only wants to gib id do you.’

  ‘Get rid of him. I don’t have time for this.’ Then he paused. His pa had told him to see what he could find out about The Beautiful Game. If there was even a small chance this man knew something useful then he should probably check his story. ‘All right. I’ll give him five minutes.’

  The man looked tired and unwashed and wore several days of beard growth. He had a strange moustache that appeared to be crooked. And despite his new-looking cold-weather gear, he shivered continuously and kept his hood up. Sid guessed he wasn’t used to Arctic weather.

  ‘Good of you to see me, young sir!’ he said as Sid approached. ‘I know that you are a busy man but you won’t regret it.’ He rubbed his forehead nervously. ‘I’m sorry, but I’m suffering a little with the weather. I wonder, would you have a glass of something warming available?’

  Sid nodded to Cripps, who produced a small flask.

  The stranger drank thirstily. ‘Splendid.’ He offered the flask to Sid. ‘The restorative effects of a small glass of spirit. That’s what keeps us men of the Arctic going, eh?’

  ‘I don’t drink,’ said Sid. ‘It brings the blood to the skin and gives you hypothermia. Now, tell me what you want.’

  ‘Ah, indeed. Well, quite simply, I wish to do you a favour, young man,’ he said, rubbing his forehead again. ‘I understand you are seeking the whereabouts of a particular tech-mine and that certain persons may have absconded with this information?’

  ‘What did you say?’ said Sid, staring blankly.

  ‘You want to find Ironheart and those pirates who know where it is,’ said the stranger. Sid’s face didn’t flicker. That much of the story was common knowledge in the rig yard. The man was starting to annoy him.

  ‘Perhaps you may be interested to know,’ he continued, ‘that India Bentley has information
about the location of Ironheart embedded in a small pendant made by her father.’

  Sid snorted. ‘So how does that help me? That little witch is halfway over the mountains by now.’

  The stranger rubbed his forehead again. ‘Because the pendant is one of a pair. And I have the other one.’ He held up a small, grey lozenge of metal, hanging by a leather thong. It was inscribed on one side with the name ‘Bella’. ‘It took me a little while to realize its significance but, believe me, you’re going to want this when you find out what it is.’

  Sid put his hand out for the twirling piece of metal but the stranger pulled it back quickly. ‘Not so fast, young sir,’ he said with a chilling smile. ‘The previous owner was not happy to give this up and it was not come by without some significant difficulty on my part.’ He paused. ‘I expect some recompense for my time and trouble.’

  Sid scowled and resisted the urge to reach for his gun. The pendant would have been easy enough to make and he had no reason to trust this soft-bellied fool. On the other hand, if the story was true then it might be a way for him to get back into his Pa’s good books. ‘What d’you want for it?’ he said.

  The stranger touched his forehead again nervously. Sid could see now that he had a large red weal between his eyes. ‘Oh, very little in the scheme of things, young sir,’ he said smoothly. ‘A mere trifle. Perhaps we could go somewhere a bit warmer to talk about it?’

  Sid thought for a moment and then nodded. ‘All right then, mister, we’ll talk. But I better like what you got to say.’

  The stranger nodded enthusiastically. ‘Oh, but you will, you will,’ he said. ‘And please, do call me Thaddeus.’

  CHAPTER 14

  THE MISMATCHED STARE

  Two days out of Salekhard, life aboard The Beautiful Game had fallen into a regular routine. The crew had stopped arguing among themselves and went about their jobs like they were part of the machinery. The rig itself was like nothing India had ever seen before. She spent much of her time in the engineering section, fascinated by the network of polished brass pipes, oil-slicked pistons and flickering gauges that lined the walls. Pieter tolerated her endless questions and he allowed her to use the big grease gun to lubricate the bearings, provided she didn’t touch anything else, and especially not the large red valves that directed cold water around the engines. ‘You shut off the coolant in a baby like this,’ he told her, ‘then the whole thing’s gonna blow apart in ten minutes flat, for sure.’ But what she liked best was the cockpit. Although she was not allowed through the door, she stood on the threshold and admired the way that Tashar commanded the machine, coaxing the controls and feeding power to the tracks with a delicate touch of the throttles. India thought that, next to being a tech-hunter, driving an ice rig was probably the coolest job going.

  Since the rescue, Rat had taken to following Calculus around like a puppy, asking endless questions about his technical schematics that the android answered with unfailing patience. As they talked in low voices, India wiped condensation from the windows with her sleeve and watched as the rig rolled steadily eastwards along wide forest trails. The land in all directions was covered in unmarked, crystal-white powder that softened the hills and transformed the trees into strange white shapes.

  As darkness fell on the third day they pulled into a sheltered location and Bulldog prepared to secure the rig for the night. When India discovered he was going outside she pestered him to let her go with him until he gave in. So, a short while later, swathed in thick woollen under-layers and a borrowed deerskin coat, she waited impatiently for Bulldog to crack the seal on the external door.

  As the hatch swung open, the outside silence rushed in to fill the little room and India stepped over the threshold into a cold and alien world. She shivered as the frozen air found the tiniest chinks in her clothing with needle-sharp fingers and recalled a time when she and Bella had played in the snow in London. She marvelled at the ice formations and the delicate frost patterns growing on the steel handrails. But when she slipped off her mitten to touch them, Bulldog yelled at her.

  ‘Don’t touch the metal without your gloves on! Your skin will freeze to it in a second and then there’s only one way to get you off.’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘You get a friend to pee on you.’ He chuckled. ‘Of course it helps if it’s a good friend.’

  India looked at the handrail and then slipped her glove back on. She didn’t think she wanted that sort of help from anyone on board The Beautiful Game.

  It was nearly dark when Bulldog had finished lashing down the equipment. He turned on the flood lamps and they stood for a moment, staring at the flakes falling thickly in the lights of the rig. India was struck by the intensity of the silence that came from a thousand miles of nothingness shrouded in thick snow.

  ‘We’d better go in,’ he said. ‘You need to be careful out here, hypothermia creeps up on you and you don’t even notice. The first sign is when you stop feeling cold and the tiredness takes hold of you. I knew a guy, got too cold one night and lay down to sleep on the roof of his rig. By the time the crew found him they had to chip him off with a crowbar.’

  Inside, Tashar was poring over the navigation charts on the mess-room table. ‘Fuel is down to thirty per cent, Captain, and we’ll need to refuel at Gorki Station. Don’t you think it’s about time you told us where we’re going?’

  Bulldog turned to India and Calculus. ‘I reckon you’ve had plenty of time to work on that pendant by now. So let’s hear that message.’

  India handed the pendant to Calculus, who laid it carefully on the table. ‘This is a solid-state storage device,’ he began. ‘A microchip. It holds John Bentley’s secret journal relating to Ironheart. As we hoped, the first part of the journal describes how to find Ironheart. It contains a map reference and a single word, “Nentu”.’

  ‘I never heard of a place called Nentu,’ said Tashar.

  ‘Nentu was the name of the Great Shaman of the North,’ said Pieter. ‘A famous wise woman who lived in these parts two hundred years ago. Could this have something to do with her?’

  ‘I don’t see how,’ said Bulldog. ‘Where’s the map reference?’

  ‘It’s a point about one hundred and fifty miles along the upper reaches of this river valley,’ said Calculus, pointing to a spot on the chart. ‘It’s very remote.’

  The crew exchanged nervous glances.

  ‘We know that place,’ said Tashar darkly. ‘It’s in the dead country.’

  ‘Nobody ever goes there, Captain,’ said Rat, wide-eyed. ‘The nomads say it’s a bad place.’

  ‘Well what better place to hide something you don’t want found?’ said Bulldog. ‘What’s the second part of the message?’

  ‘It’s an inventory of what John Bentley found at Ironheart,’ said Calculus.

  He paused.

  ‘Well don’t keep us in suspense,’ said Pieter. ‘What’s there?’

  Calculus glanced at India. She nodded encouragingly. ‘Treasure,’ he said. ‘Gold, jewels, old-tech. It’s all there for the taking.’

  The pirates’ eyes gleamed. Pieter and Rat grinned and punched each other on the shoulder, and Bulldog smiled thoughtfully.

  ‘So once we find this place,’ said Bulldog, ‘how do we get in?’

  Calculus shook his head. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘Mr Bentley left no instructions for getting in.’

  Everyone looked crestfallen.

  ‘So basically,’ said Tashar, ‘we have to drive to the middle of nowhere to find this place, and then hope they left the key under the mat?’ She rolled her eyes. ‘My God, I preferred it when we just went rigging. By the time we get back to the southern fields we’ll have lost six weeks of drilling time. That’s half the season gone and money out of our pockets on a wild moose chase.’

  Bulldog folded the maps. ‘This is no goose chase, Tashar,’ he said. ‘This is the best chance we’ll ever have to make it rich. Trust me, my ears never lie and this lead on Ironheart is hot
. We’ll press on as planned and, when we find it, then we’ll figure out how we’re going to get in. Perhaps John Bentley left some other clues that we haven’t found yet.’

  The meeting ended and Bulldog and Tashar began to plot the following day’s course. While Rat and Calculus disappeared into Engineering for another technical chat, India helped Pieter to prepare the evening meal.

  ‘If you want to be indispensable on a rig,’ he said, expertly dicing some onions, ‘then learn how to cook. Every rigger I ever met eats like a starved bear, even the women.’

  India laughed. The longer she spent on board The Beautiful Game, the more the crew seemed to be like a large and badly behaved family. ‘Do you have any children of your own, Pieter?’ she asked.

  ‘Sure,’ he said. ‘Four boys and they all want to be riggers like their dad.’ He smiled proudly. ‘But my wife’s not so keen, especially when I have to travel this far east. She believes too many of the old stories about this place.’

  ‘What stories?’

  So as they worked, he told her ghost stories about the haunted places where the forest shadows would suck the life from a man’s body if you accidentally stepped into them. He told her about the crews who caught glimpses of something behind them in the mirror and were driven mad with the thought that they were not alone.

  He scraped the vegetables into the sauce and turned down the heat. ‘Once, when I was a junior crewman on the Snow Maiden, we came across another rig rolling across the ice. We signalled them to stop but they didn’t even slow down.’ He shivered. ‘When we finally got on board, every man was still at his post, stone dead, but their eyes were wide and staring as though they had seen the gates of hell.’

  ‘Where was that?’ said India, fearing she already knew the answer.