Sherlock Holmes: The Coils of Time & Other Stories (Sherlock Holmes Adventures Book 1) (20 page)

Colonel Sebastian Moran chuckled. “I learned many secrets while in service to Professor Moriarty; many influential men and women who wanted those secrets kept locked away interceded upon my behalf.”

“I would have thought your death a desirous thing for them.”

“Ah, the benefit of living in a free country where a man always has the liberty of giving utterance to thoughts, even when faced with the spectre of death,” Colonel Moran pointed out. “Also, not all officials of our government have your unswerving moral compass; they saw how useful a man of my talents could be.”

“And others as well, I see.”

“Ah, the Martians…”

“Hardly Martians.”

“Deduced that, did you?” Colonel Moran said with a low chuckle. “What a very clever jackanapes you still are, Mr Holmes. Well, yes, wherever they’re from it’s just as easy to call them Martians as demons or anything else. I am no more concerned with labels than they are.”

“I imagine you have much in common with these creatures,” Holmes observed.

“I know you mean that as a gibe, Holmes, but I choose to take it differently,” Colonel Moran said. “They may be animals by our standards, and some of those assigned menial tasks are not very highly evolved, but I find I have more in common with them than with my fellow humans. Their intellects are vast, cool and unsympathetic, and they recognised those qualities in me as well when the tide of events happened to wash me into their midst. Oddly enough, they see the same quality in you, which is why they brought you to me. I think they also fear you a little.”

“I hope you are not going to try to convince me to join your ranks,” Holmes said with a slight sneer.

“Oh, hardly that,” Colonel Moran snorted. “I think they should kill you – and they surely shall – but first they want to know the same as I do. How came you to find us here? How did you come to be in that machine? Why are you here? And, of course, what were you doing when you were captured?”

“You should know, Colonel Moran, that I will not satisfy your curiosity, or that of your masters.”

“Masters?” Colonel Moran stood, and as he did, the shrouds fell away from him, revealing something that had once been a man. “A god can have no master.”

That which had been a man named Colonel Sebastian Moran, murderer, card cheat and one time confidant of the infamous Professor Moriarty, now showed through but dimly, as would a used canvas layered over in preparation of a new image. The new image that had been superimposed upon was neither man nor Martian, but a sinister melding of both – swaths of leathery hide, tentacles, and limbs and orifices the purpose of which could only be guessed at. The shoulders were misshapen like vestigial wings, the neck was chorded and possessed feathery gills, and the head  was a phantasmal skull; it was, however, definitely Colonel Sebastian Moran, for there remained the jaw of a brute, the brow of a philosopher and a murderer’s cold eyes. And upon his head was something like the helmet Holmes had used to control the tripod-walker, but much smaller.

“The years have not been kind to you, Colonel Moran,” Holmes quipped. “And your new friends have treated you poorly.”

Colonel Moran  uttered a frosty laugh. “These Martians are my salvation and my redemption, the authors of my rebirth into immortality. When I first came to the interest of the Great Minds for which these physical creatures are but shadows, I was in poor shape, nearly dead; they could have returned me to my former self, but they made me better.”

“They made you a monster,” Holmes said. “Or perhaps I should say they brought out your true form, a perfect match to the twisted creature that has always lurked within.”

“What a limited little human you are, Holmes,” Moran sneered. “Limited of mind, limited of body. These beings treat biology and surgery as we do engineering, though they do not use such crude instruments as scalpels, needles and sutures. Unlike puny humanity, they have taken control of their race’s own evolution, skillfully producing, as needed, laborers and scientists, warriors and leaders…”

“And you,” Holmes submitted

“And me,” Colonel Moran agreed. “I hope you understand why I will not allow you to join us.”

“Not that I would ever agree to it,” Holmes said, “but I do understand. Entirely.”

“You do?”

“You are a jealous god.”

Colonel Moran’s smile was simultaneously human and hideous. “Now that we understand each other, Holmes, answer the questions I put to you. Why are you here? What were you doing in the Outer Ring when you were captured?”

“I shan’t tell you,” Holmes replied. “You have made it all too clear that I shall not save my life by cooperating.”

“I could have my servitors kill you now, where you stand.”

“In which case, you would still not have the answers to your questions.”

“You can be made to answer.”

Holmes laughed. “Torture? Really, Colonel Moran, I had rather expected something more from gods.”

“Do not mock me!”

“You mock yourself” Holmes snapped back. “Despite all your grandiose claims, you are still nothing more than the card cheat who murdered a young man to keep from being found out.”

Colonel Sebastian Moran roared with rage and started to dismount the dais, but stopped as a complex trilling noise filled the chamber. All the Martians quivered, and even Moran trembled. At the same time, the metal band upon his head was covered with coruscating scintillations.

Holmes smiled as he received more straw for his bricks.

“So, even gods have masters,” Holmes murmured.

Moran came down from the platform and walked toward Holmes, but his movements were awkward and jerky. He thrust his grotesque face close to Holmes.

“By the time we finish with you, you will pray for torture,” the human turncoat said. “You will pray for death.’

Perhaps
, Holmes thought as he considered his fate.
But not till it is too late for all of us
.

The large, tentacled Martian servitors grabbed Holmes harshly, and it was by his own actions that he kept his arms from being yanked free of their sockets. They forced Holmes to enter an adjoining chamber, Moran in accompaniment, and secured the human interloper to a black table from which extended crystalline rods and varicoloured spheres.

The room itself was filled with crystals of every shape and hue. Many huge flat crystals pulsed with inner lights, some showing vistas unearthly, others filled with shifting inhuman forms.

“Some sort of telephonoscope, along the lines of the German Nipkow’s optical scanning device?” Holmes ventured.

“Compare to human science, you might as well say magic.” Moran sneered. “Their superior technology shall win the day.”

“I would expect better of you, Colonel Moran.”

“What do you mean?”

“As a veteran of Her Majesty’s Indian Army, you, of all people, should realise the weapon is not the gun, but the soldier who wields it,” Holmes pointed out. “Even though I have never served England in a military capacity, I know that…”

“Enough!” Colonel Moran screamed. “You’re stalling,  but why? A hope of rescue?”

Holmes held silent.

Moran gestured, but the servitors did not move until the metal band clinging to Moran’s head crackled with electrical energy. The crystalline rods and the spheres began to pulse with light. What shot through Holmes’ lean frame was the most intense pain he had ever felt, raw energy flowing like a river, engulfing him so he could barely breathe. Crushing weight was applied to various internal organs, and it felt as if hands were reaching within him to churn and slash. He was bombarded with a fury of sounds that were at once incomprehensible and understandable, asking questions and  demanding answers. It was all, he quickly realised, a psychic invasion rather than physical, which fitted in very well with the way the fighting-machines were controlled, and servitors as well.

Since the attack was mental, Holmes fought it with every bit of his considerable intellect and will. Although he was not aware of the exact passage of time, he did realise that time was passing, that it was taking precious minutes for the Martian machines to break through his force of will, and though he understood that he could not maintain a barrier forever, he must do so long enough for Watson to bring the wrath of human civilisation upon this place.

Even if Holmes did not survive – and he had started out for the East India Docks knowing full well he would likely perish – the human race might, by the loss of his life, achieve something of a victory. And the loss of a man’s life, he thought, was a small enough price to pay for the possibility of so much gain. If nothing else, Holmes reflected ruefully, it was a logical transaction.

Holmes suddenly felt a shudder that was neither part of the Martians’ mental machinations nor an action of the spheres and crystals surrounding the examination table. He did not realise the physicality of the motion or its pervasiveness until she saw Colonel Moran and the Martians about him stagger, then stagger again and nearly fall as another deep shudder coursed through the building.

“What have you done?” Colonel Moran roared.

Colonel Sebastian Moran twisted about and regarded Sherlock Holmes  with an expression of savage hate. He flung himself upon the captive man, but Holmes, who immediately noticed a sharp drop in the intensity of the psychic attack and a lessening of the bonds which held him, met Moran’s attack with a vigorous defence that caught the traitor by surprise.

They rolled off the table, shattering crystals and sending the deadly spheres crashing to the floor. Despite his augmented strength and the strange limbs and mechanisms that were now part of his being, Colonel Moran found himself at a great disadvantage, for Holmes possessed the might that stems from inner righteousness and the will to survive.

All around the two men was smoke and fire and disorder, but neither man paid heed. There existed between them the enmity of a fight left unfinished and justice delayed. For Moran, there was still the matter of revenge for Professor Moriarty; for Holmes, there was the noose that should have been Moran’s.

“You think you’ve put an end to this, Holmes?”

“I know we have, but it has nothing to do with the impending destruction of this complex,” Holmes replied. “This will cripple the Martian war effort for the moment, keep them from making any other gains, perhaps even make them lose what they have taken already, but the true defeat of your allies was written the moment they breathed our air and imbibed human blood.”

“What do you mean, Holmes?” Moran demanded. “What game are you playing at?”

“You boasted of the skills of the Martian surgeons, but look at your own seams,” Holmes said. “I may not have the medical skills of my friend, Doctor Watson, but even I recognise symptoms of advanced bacterial infection. You said the Martians engineered their own bodies and evolution, like machines, I suppose, but consider that even the mightiest machine can be brought low by the tiniest grains of sand in the gears.”

“You’ll not outlive me, Holmes!”

Moran rushed at him.

Holmes struck at him with the weighted crop from the pocket of his coat.

Moran staggered back and fell, heavily stunned.

“Adequate invaders of planets, but dullards in so many ways,” Holmes remarked coolly. “Even a rookie copper would have searched me.”

Holmes turned and ran, pushing and threading his way through the hordes of panicked Martians. Above the sound of the building collapsing around him, Holmes heard the laughter and mocking voice of Colonel Sebastian Moran.

“You’ll die with us, Holmes! You’ve outsmarted yourself this time Mr Sherlock Holmes, you damned jackanapes!”

As Holmes made is way toward the entrance he dodged a deadly rain of crystals and stone. Flames soared both around him and within the televisor crystals; when he saw the stricken beings within the crystals, he realised they were not merely windows onto another world, but doorways as well – the world of the invaders, wherever amongst the stars it may actually be, was experiencing not just the destruction brought by artillery shells and bombs, but that of Earth’s bacteria-laden air.

Miraculously, Holmes escaped the temple as it collapsed, but there was nowhere to go which was not thronged by Martians. The booms of guns were followed by the shrill whines of shells, which landed with deadly accuracy, blasting the flying machines and the tripods. Explosions towered around Holmes, and the water, which might have otherwise offered an avenue of escape, was layered with flaming fluids.

Holmes headed upward, climbing the scaffolding that had once been the masts of ships, heading vaguely in the direction of what Colonel Moran had termed the Outer Ring, from where he had signaled Watson, apparently with great success. Other explosions shook the Docks, but these were not from artillery fire, but from dropped bombs. Holmes gazed upward and saw five great airships soaring into view.

Holmes finally attained the wall above the platform where he had stood when he had passed for a Martian. He had though of jumping into the water, swimming for safety, but here, too, the water was a sheet of fire. And the flames were licking their way upward, consuming the Docks.

Abruptly, one of the airships broke away from its flight and dropped low. A ladder unrolled, and Holmes grabbed it as it flew past, clinging tightly in near disbelief at his salvation before he started the long climb upward.