Silent City
Page 17
“I suppose I should thank you,” I said to the man who had rescued me.
“I wouldn’t go counting your seahorses before they hatch,” he replied. “How do you know I did not release you from the clutches of military intelligence, the company’s biggest oxymoron, only to have you at my mercy?”
“Did you?”
“Not yet.” He smiled again.
“Who are you?”
“I could tell you, but, well you know the answer by now. Let’s just assume I represent some important people and organisations within the company that have an interest in your well-being and having a clear account of events at the scientific base,” he said.
“You’re going to interrogate me now?” Frying pan and a rather large, hot, roaring fire sprang to mind.
“Interrogate no? I am going to feed you, let you bathe, have a drink and then we’ll have a chat about the events. After that, I’ll put you on the next transport back to your home city.”
“A drink?” And suddenly the day had just got a whole lot brighter.
“Of course and before we start, I should probably tell you that the interests I represent have been back to the site of the outpost. We’ve recovered several bodies. Keller’s included.”
The day darkened again, a massive algae bloom blocking out the sun’s rays.
“Keller wasn’t on the Sub?” I asked
“He wasn’t on the sub,” he said.
“He didn’t destroy the city?”
“He didn’t.”
“Elena did?”
“Well now, that is one of the things we need to discuss.” He put a friendly hand on my shoulder. “Shall we go?”
Chapter 38
The beer sat untouched on the glass table top. The whiskey glass next to it contained a fair measure of amber liquid.
Silence encompassed the room. The subtle links of solitude and loneliness joined us together. Tom tended the bar and the jukebox hung on the wall, daring us to insert a coin and choose a song.
Everything was as it had been. Apart from the fellow I had found in my seat. I hadn’t been gone that long, though I knew the rules. Dead man’s shoes. Sadly, for him at least, this dead man was still walking and still had his shoes on. It had taken five minutes of mute staring before he’d picked up his own drink and moved to the empty table by the door.
My seat, my home. My place in the world. Days of memories to process and years of memories to let back in. I leaned back, let my head rest on the back of the seat and closed my eyes. Let them come, I thought.
And they did. Every face of every person who’d died, those I’d killed, those I’d seen killed and those I had found. The catalogue of faces was getting longer. Many I could put names to, but too many were without even that simple memorial.
Keller’s was there and I offered his spirit an apology for thinking wrong of him.
The man who I’d steamed to death? Perhaps he’d been coming to release me, to feed me, or to just do his job and carry on with his life. It had been a horrible, painful way to go. I could spare a little sympathy, even in the knowledge that he was more likely to be a member of the VIKYN team who’d killed the rest. Or he could have been the janitor. I’ll never know.
The faces kept coming, one after the other until, finally, and with a great sigh, Tyler’s appeared. The smile, the hair, the laughs, frowns and tears. Tyler’s face was the only one that moved in my memory, the one that I could see at different ages.
Her smile died. In the end, the last time, she didn’t look like herself at all. Skin sagged around the bones on her face. Hair hung limp. The coroner had done his best to hide the bruises, but the cuts were impossible to cover up. Her eyes were closed and her chest was still. She didn’t look peaceful, she didn’t look like anything she had been in life. In that shell, that cracked and broken body, everything that Tyler had been was gone. Flesh, bone, organs, meat and gristle, that’s all that lay on the slab. Empty. Like me.
“Fuck,” I muttered as the tears came.
I picked up the whiskey and knocked it back in one big gulp. The fire burned down my throat, its heat adding to the rage already churning in my stomach. With the back of my hand, I wiped the tears away.
As I did, my gaze travelled up a pair of long shapely legs, across a flat stomach, small breasts and, at last, to Derva’s beautiful face.
“Mind if I sit?” she asked.
“I don’t think I could stop you, could I?”
She sat down, placing her own drink on the table top.
“You didn’t come and see me when you got back,” she said. It was a half accusation, half worry, kind of statement.
“I didn’t want to see anyone. Which is pretty easy in my case.”
“You know you’ve been cleared of all wrong doing?” Her eyes looked up from the table and met mine. “It wasn’t your fault. The mayor feels terrible for sending you into that. It was supposed to be a simple repair job.”
“It was sabotage. VIKYN destroyed that city. There were explosives on the support struts.”
Derva looked around the room, checking where the attention of all the other patrons lay. I could have told her, no one was listening. It wasn’t that kind of place.
“People have been back to the site. Their investigations show no trace of explosives or evidence of them in the debris. They’ve recovered some of the crew,” she whispered.
“No evidence? I saw the device. My suit will have a record of its findings, the messages I sent, the readings from the explosion and the battle.” I leaned forward, placing one hand on the table and pointing at her with the other. “Get your teams to look there.”
“They did. They found nothing. Your suit memory shows nothing from the moment of your arrival at the city and arriving back at Base 1. The first readings they could find are of your approach to Base 1 and surfacing in their moon-pool.”
“What? That’s not possible.” I must have said it a little loud, a customer, a new one, turned to look in my direction. Just a glance on his way to the toilets at the back. He didn’t recognise me, but then in the dark bar it was hard to recognise anyone. I knew him. The last time I had seen his face, he was swinging a fist in my direction whilst two of his friends held me still.
“Corin?” Derva prompted me out of the silence.
“Someone must have wiped the memory.”
“It might have been damaged it in the battle?” she suggested.
“No, it wasn’t. Believe me you know when a Fish-Suit has been damaged, especially if you’re wearing it at the time. Someone is covering this up. What about the VIKYN submarines? What about their attack on the city?”
“VIKYN representatives have been in contact about a rogue group who stole some of their vehicles. Apparently, they are having a little trouble with some religious fundamentalists in their company. The worship of something called Thor, a warrior god of some sort, has resurfaced. They have assured us that they taking all the necessary action to retrieve their submarines and deal with the insurgents.”
“Bollocks. Absolute bollocks. Those submarines were well armed, well crewed, and they knew what they were doing.” I shook my head. Someone was playing with me, with the situation. It had all got political when all I wanted was a taste of revenge, and I knew where to get it. “I need to pee.”
She sat alone at the table as I made my way to the toilet. The door creaked open, but the fellow stood at the urinal didn’t turn round. Eye contact in a man’s toilet was something to be avoided. I let the door close, rolled my shoulders, stretched my arms, and let the anger rise. The deaths at the Silent City. Elena’s taunt that she knew something about Tyler’s death. The death of my child and that of my crew. My hands closed into fists.
“It is good to see you again, and this time with no friends to help you out,” I said as the door clicked shut.
He turned, hand still holding on to his cock. All he managed to say was a truncated, “What?”
My first punch hit him square on the jaw, the
second on his shoulder, third in gut. After that, I stopped counting.
NEXT
If you have enjoyed the beginning to Corin’s story, I’d also recommend that you check out my Fantasy series, The Forbidden List, which is available on Amazon now.
THE STONE ROAD
In the war between the two cities there are opportunities on both sides. For the diplomat, there is the possibility for peace and wealth. For the solider, there is a chance for fame and glory. However, to realise their dreams both must pay a heavy price.
The Empire has lasted over a thousand years but there is new enemy on the horizon.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
G R Matthews began reading in the cot. His mother, at her wits end with the constant noise and unceasing activity, would plop him down on the soft mattress with an encyclopaedia full of pictures then quietly slip from the room. His father, ever the pragmatist, declared, that they should, "throw the noisy bugger out of the window." Happily, this event never came to pass (or if it did, he bounced well). Growing up, he spent Sunday afternoons on the sofa watching westerns and Bond movies with the self-same parent who had once wished to defenestrate him. When not watching the six-gun heroes or spies being out-acted by their own eyebrows, he devoured books like a hungry wolf in the dead of winter. Beginning with Patrick Moore and Arthur C Clarke he soon moved on to Isaac Asimov. However, one wet afternoon in a book shop in his home town, not far from the standing stones of Avebury, he came across a book by David Eddings - and soon Sci-Fi gave way to Fantasy. Many years later, G R Matthews finally realised a dream and published his own fantasy novel, The Stone Road, in the hopes that other hungry wolves out there would find a hearty meal. You can follow him on twitter @G_R_Matthews or visit his website at www.grmatthews.com