The Osiris Curse (23 page)

They reached the front atrium, where the huge hybrid had charged Tweed. They sprinted through the entrance, slipping and sliding on the snow outside. They kept going, moving as fast as they could.

They made it to the bottom of the slope, taking shelter behind the curve in the mountain wall, then turned back to watch.

The complex was almost completely gone. Dust and smoke hung heavy in the air and Octavia was thankful for that. It should have masked their escape. The area where the complex had once stood was now a vast depression, a gouge in the mountaintop. There was nothing left to show that anyone had ever been there. Just an empty crater.

The
Albion
still hung in the air. As they watched, the white light underneath it flickered out. Silence dropped over the mountains. No screams, no cries for help, no moans of pain.

Nothing.

The Tesla engines flared to life and the
Albion
turned around in a slow circle. It moved forward, gradually picking up speed as it flew west.

They watched till it was a speck against the grey sky. No one said anything. What was there to say? They had failed. London was as good as finished.

Not only that, but they were likely going to die as well, stranded out here in the frozen mountains.

There was nothing else to do but trudge back the way they had come. Her mother came to walk next to her. She put an arm around Octavia's shoulder, and Octavia slipped hers around her mother's waist.

“Just don't say ‘you did your best,'” said Octavia.

“I wouldn't dream of it.”

They walked in silence for a while.

“But you did,” said her mother. “We all did.”

“Not much of a comfort for the people in London, is it?”

“No,” sighed her mother. “No it isn't.”

They passed the bodies of the hybrids, buried beneath the snow, and toward late afternoon arrived at the crevice where they had spent the night. Without talking, they all headed inside. This time they lit a fire straight away. There was no need to hide from anyone anymore.

Night fell, and the stars burst into glittering life. They huddled together and slept fitfully, rising early the next morning to continue their trek.

They were heading back to the entrance into Hyperborea. Octavia wasn't sure why. They had destroyed the elevator with the last rocket launcher. It wasn't as if they could go back down.

But it was the only place they
could
go.

They were about an hour away from the cave entrance when they heard the noise, a dull booming that echoed around the mountainside. It went on for a while, accompanied by the screeching of metal, then the crump and rumble of falling snow. An avalanche, perhaps?

They picked up speed, curious to know the cause.

They found out soon enough.

The Boisterous Lady
hung in the air above what used to be the cave entrance leading to Hyperborea. The ship was terribly battered, the sides scraped and shredded, huge dents in the metal where rocks had hit it. The entrance to the cave itself had collapsed, rock and rubble now piled up high, sealing off the entrance completely.

Octavia stared at the ship in shock. She wondered briefly if she was seeing things, but then Solomon's voice boomed over his speaker system.

“
Hallo over there. Solomon wonders if you might need a ride somewhere? Excuse the lateness of my arriving, but some silly person destroyed the lift shaft and I had to blast my way up. Very time consuming! You want to come? I have hot drinks and chocolate. Lots of chocolate
.”

“Chocolate?” said Dr. Campbell. She looked speculatively at the others, then elbowed them out of the way and set off at a run.

The others soon followed.

The wind whipped Tweed's hair around his face. He bared his teeth into the gale, grinning like a maniac. Then he remembered that this kind of thing annoyed Octavia, so he quickly stopped.

He looked guiltily around and saw her flying her pod off to his right. Was that starboard or port? He wasn't sure. He tapped the controls, his pod banking, and dropped beneath her. The waters of the channel weaved briefly into view, then vanished again, replaced by heavy grey clouds as he pulled up on her right.

He waved.

The battle pods, as Solomon called his escape craft, were surprisingly easy to steer. Just a stick control, the slightest touch of which sent you spiraling left or right, and a lever to control speed. That was it.

They had two seats, front and back. They'd mounted a gun in the rear of each pod so that one person could drive and another could shoot.

And Tweed had a feeling they were going to be doing a lot of shooting. They were half a day out from London now. It had taken them four days of travel, with Solomon coaxing every last bit of speed out of
The Boisterous Lady
. The Hyperborean was convinced they would be able to catch up with the
Albion
. It was too heavy, he said, too cumbersome. No match for his beautiful ship.

They hadn't quite caught up with it, but they
had
made good time. Tweed didn't think they were too far behind.

But would it be enough?

At first there had been some discussion about why they even had to learn to fly the pods. Octavia had raised the point that if the
Albion
flew into view above London and started firing a Tesla death ray at the city, the Ministry would respond. They had to have their own airships and weapons to fight off an attack.

That was when Dr. Strauss told them about the invisibility devices. The same technology they had encountered on Harry Banks's constructs had been brought to Sekhem and Nehi by Temple. The scientists had adapted the devices to the
Albion
.

Which meant the airship and the death ray itself was invisible. No one would know where the attack was coming from.

Tweed glanced over at
The Boisterous Lady
. Molock was waving at them from the railing. Tweed wiggled the lever, the pod dipping left and right in response. Molock gestured for them to head back aboard, then he pointed over his shoulder.

Tweed dropped the pod beneath the airship and saw that land was visible in the distance.

They were back in England.

The Boisterous Lady
crested the white cliffs. Tweed stared down at them, then nudged Octavia, who was leaning on the railing next to him.

“Hey, Songbird. Do you think we're ‘proudly cresting' the white cliffs of Dover? Or are we sort of
limping
over them?”

Octavia gave him half a smile. “Guess we'll know in a little bit, won't we?”

“Yeah.” Tweed sighed. “I suppose we will.” He turned his gaze back to the grey clouds. Snow was falling again, covering the familiar countryside with a comforting, suffocating blanket that hid the truth of what was to come.

“Do you really think they'll go ahead with it?” he eventually asked.

She searched his eyes. “
You
don't, do you? You think they'll realize what they're doing is wrong. That they'll have an attack of conscience.”

Tweed shrugged uncomfortably and broke eye contact. He did sort of think that. No, he
hoped
that. Everything Sekhem and Nehi were doing, it was out of pain, hurt. Surely they'd realize that killing millions of innocents wasn't the answer.

He had to hope.

He stared into the distance, watching the hills and towns roll by beneath them.

About two hours later, he saw the smoke.

At first he thought it was just the clouds, or perhaps the normal smoke and steam that gathered above the city.

But it wasn't. Wavering plumes of thick, oily smoke drifted above London.

He stared at it in shock, then ran to the trapdoor and shouted below, “They've started! We're too late!”

The others rushed onto the deck. As they drew closer to the city they could see the smoke was coming from where the Houses of Parliament had once stood.

The buildings were gone. Just…
gone
. The old Big Ben was nowhere to be seen. All that was left was a smoking hole in the ground, a hole that was slowly expanding.

As they watched in helpless horror, London Bridge buckled. It sagged, and then the supports disintegrated and the entire structure dropped slowly into the Thames. The weight of the bridge sucked the water under, and a few seconds later it erupted upward again in a dark fountain that flashed into steam as soon as it touched the death ray.

There was no doubting anymore. Sekhem and Nehi were going to kill everyone in London unless they were stopped.

“Come on,” called Tweed, running for the hold where the pods were kept.

The others followed him into the dim underbelly of the ship, pulling on their flying goggles and strapping themselves in. Only four pods in all. Tweed and Octavia in one, Elizabeth and Molock in another, Faber and Ampney in the third, and Campbell and Kolotcha in the last. Strauss was staying behind to help with the hull-mounted guns while Solomon flew the ship.

Octavia took the gun, not because Tweed was better at flying than her (at least, that's what she said—he reckoned differently) but because she was a better shot than he was. (They knew this for a fact, unfortunately. They'd had a competition.)

Solomon pulled a lever and trapdoors in the hull fell open. The pods dropped. Tweed let them fall for a few seconds, then thrust the lever forward to build up some speed.

They peeled away from the airship. The other three pods dropped into the sky, then banked and veered to either side. They headed straight for the Houses of Parliament. Tweed squinted into the clouds. There. He could see the disturbance in the air, the same as when they were chasing the constructs. It was actually harder to notice against the clouds, probably because the
Albion
itself wasn't moving. No one else would even know it was there.

“Remember the plan!” Octavia shouted behind him.

He nodded. It wasn't
much
of a plan, if they were being honest. The others were going to act as a distraction while Tweed and Nightingale snuck aboard. They'd been chosen because they already knew the layout of the airship.

Tweed pushed the acceleration lever forward as far as it would go. The pod lunged ahead, shaking violently with the strain. The air howled in his ears. He pulled back on the steering stick, trying to gain some height. This was going to be tricky. They needed to hit
the
Albion
from the bottom, but that was kind of difficult when they couldn't really
see
the bottom.

They were about a hundred meters from the airship when the ornithopters suddenly appeared, blinking into existence as they exited the invisibility field cast around the
Albion
. He heard the distant rattle of gunfire as they picked their targets.

Octavia swung her own gun on its pivot and fired solid slugs of energy at the ornithopters. Bullets zipped past their pod. Tweed banked, trying to keep moving so he wouldn't be an easy target.

Kolotcha and Campbell dived straight in, aiming for the closest ornithopter and firing madly. Their shots skimmed the wings of one of their attackers and it dropped through the air in a crazed corkscrew. Tweed tilted the pod slightly so he could see it crash into the waters of the Thames far below.

Tweed pulled to the left, hoping to avoid the battle and slip past unnoticed. But two ornithopters peeled away and came for them. Tweed turned slightly, moving side on to give Octavia a chance to fire. Her shots sliced through the air, missing their pursuers and disappearing into the clouds.

The ornithopters drew close, sticking to their rear. Tweed tried to shake them. He pulled up and they followed. He dropped, then banked. They did the same.

He got desperate, trying to twist and fall at the same time, skimming over the water and rising up about a hundred feet back along their path. He thought his pursuers would both follow. One did. The other slowed almost to a standstill, which meant Tweed brought his pod back up directly in front of him.

Tweed found himself staring into the barrel of a gun. Except it wasn't just one barrel. It was another of those autocannons. One of the cultists furiously cranked a handle and the barrel spun, spitting out bullets directly at them.

Tweed pushed forward on the stick, but he wasn't quick enough. Bullets peppered their side, cutting holes in the metal flank and barely missing Tweed's leg. He cut all power and dropped straight down. Octavia pulled the gun back and fired up at the ornithopter's belly.

Her shots struck home, ripping a hole right through the ornithopter. It somersaulted backward then dropped like a stone, trailing black smoke in its wake.

“Good shot!” Tweed shouted, pulling up. He craned his neck around to see where the second attacker was. He tried to see past Octavia's head, but she stiffened suddenly and pointed behind him.

He whipped around and saw the ornithopter coming straight at them, the craft's wings folded back in a diving position. What was the idiot doing? There was no way he could pull out of such an attack. Folding the wings was for when the craft were parked.

He was going to crash into them.

“
DUCK!
” screamed Octavia.

Tweed dropped his head and felt heat sear his neck as Octavia fired the gun. There was a scream, abruptly cut off. He looked up to see the ornithopter, smoking and on fire, heading straight for them. He yanked the lever to the side. The pod banked right. The ruined ornithopter scraped along the bottom of their pod, sending them spinning into the clouds.

Tweed managed to steady the craft. He quickly looked around. There were no more attackers coming for them so he aimed straight for the wavering spot that signaled the location of the
Albion
.

He slowed down as they approached, eventually moving at no more than a crawl. He stared intently upward, nudging their craft slowly up.

And then the wooden underside of the hull faded into view.

Tweed blinked, then realized they had entered the field given off by the invisibility generators. Octavia tapped him on the shoulder and pointed to a spot on the hull.

“Over there,” she shouted.

Tweed nodded and moved the craft forward. When they drew close he saw a trapdoor in the underside of the airship. But there was no way to open it from this side.

“Drop lower a bit!” she shouted.

Tweed did as instructed and Octavia fired the pod's gun at the trapdoor. It burst away into the ship, leaving a gaping opening in the hull. Tweed guided the ship forward and Octavia undid her safety harness, stood up, and leaped into the
Albion
. A moment later she poked her head out again.

“Come on then!”

Easier said than done. This was the tricky bit. Tweed undid his own harness, then balanced the steering stick with his knees. He reached up, but he wasn't close enough to grab the lip of the trapdoor. He'd have to stand.

He looked around at the clouds and mist all around him. Off to their left the others exchanged gunfire with the cultists. He watched Elizabeth fly her pod beneath an ornithopter, Molock shooting it from beneath. The enemy vessel burst into flame and spiraled out of the sky. Then Dr. Campbell flew through the thick smoke given off by the explosion, heading straight for two more ornithopters. Kolotcha stood up in his seat, firing widely into the sky. Tweed could see, even from this distance, that he was screaming defiantly into the air as he did so.

A bullet struck him in the chest.

Tweed cried out in horror. Dr. Campbell took her eyes off the ornithopters to see why Kolotcha had stopped firing. She saw the Russian slumped over in his seat and grabbed his arm. He was still alive, barely. He looked up and gripped her hand.

Both ornithopters opened fire on their pod, the bullets ripping it to pieces in seconds.

Tweed squeezed his eyes shut, turning quickly away. He didn't want to see that, didn't want to see them die. He took a deep breath and looked up to see that Octavia still had her head hanging out of the trapdoor. She had seen everything.