Retribution Falls - Chris Wooding [104]
Keep pounding, Bess, he thought. As long as I hear you, I know you’re alright.
The compass was so big that Crake could barely hold it in one hand. It was also, on closer examination, not a compass at all. It had no north–south–west–east markings, and it had four needles instead of one, all of equal length and numbered. Additionally, there were eight tiny sets of digits, set in pairs, with each digit on a rotating cylinder to allow it to count from zero to nine. These set pairs were also numbered one to four, presumably to correspond with the needles. The needles were all pointing in the same direction, no matter which way he turned it, and the numbers were all at zero.
“I think we found ’em!” Malvery said. He scooped up all the charts from the chest and shoved them inside his threadbare jersey, then looked at Crake. “Is that the device you were after?”
“I believe it is.”
Crake had little doubt that what he held was the mysterious device Thade had mentioned. The strangeness of the compass, and the fact that it had been placed in the same chest as the charts, was enough for him.
“We should—” he began, but then he saw a movement in the doorway, and there was the loud report of a gun.
Malvery had seen it too: one of the crew, a black-haired, scruffy man, drawn by the sound of voices and the sight of the captain’s door left open. On seeing the intruders, the crewman hastily pulled his gun and fired. The doctor ducked aside, fast enough so that the bullet only grazed his shoulder.
Another gun fired, an instant after the first. Pinn’s. The crewman gaped, and a bright swell of blood soaked out from his chest into his shirt. He staggered back and slid down the wall of the passageway outside, disbelief in his eyes.
“We got what we came for,” said Malvery, his voice flat. “Time to go.”
The crewman lay in the passageway, gasping for air. Pinn and Malvery passed him without looking at him, pausing only to steal his pistol. Crake edged by as if he was contagious, horrified and fascinated. The crewman’s eyes followed his, rolling in their sockets with an awful, empty interest.
Crake found himself pinned by that gaze. It was the look of a man unprepared, shocked to find himself at the gates of death so swiftly and unexpectedly. There was bewilderment in that look. The dying man was crushed by the knowledge that, unlike every other desperate moment in his life, there was no second chance, no way that wit or strength could pull him clear. It filled Crake with a terror such as he’d never known before.
Now Crake knew why Malvery and Pinn hadn’t looked.
He was trembling as he followed his companions up the corridor. After a moment, he remembered Bess. He put the whistle to his lips, the whistle tuned to a frequency that only she could hear, and he blew. It was a note different from the one he used to wake her up and put her to sleep. This one was a signal.
Time to come back, Bess.
“ANY MOMENT NOW, BOYS!” the bosun yelled, as the bulkhead door screeched and lurched forward on its hinges. It was possible to see glimpses of movement through the gap at the top of the door, where the eight-inch steel had bent forward under the assault of the creature in the cargo hold. Enough to see that there was something massive behind, something as fearsome as its roaring suggested.
The crew braced themselves, aiming their revolvers and lever-action shotguns. The man operating the tripod-mounted rotary cannon flexed his trigger finger, wiped sweat from his brow, and sighted. The door had given up the struggle now. Each blow could be the one that brought them face-to-face with the thing in the hold.
Doubt was on their faces. All their guns seemed suddenly pitiful. Only discipline kept them in place, crowded in the dim passageway.
The door buckled inward, its upper hinge coming away