The Jennifer Morgue - Charles Stross [168]
“This is the management,” I intone. “We have been notified that contrary to statutory regulations issued by the Council of Guilds of Stormville you are running an unauthorized boarding house, to wit, you are providing accommodation for mendicant journeymen. Normally we’d let you off with a warning and a fifty-gold-piece fine, but in this particular case—”
I’m readying the amulet of teleportation, but she seems to be able to anticipate events, which is just plain wrong for a non-player character following a script. “Accommodate this!” she hisses, and cuts the connection dead. There’s a hammering rumbling sound overhead. I glance up, then take to my heels as I wrap my arms about my head; she’s animated the gargoyles, and they’re taking wing, but they’re still made of stone—and stone isn’t known for its lighter-than-air qualities. The crashing thunder goes on for quite some time, and the dust makes my eyes sting, but after a while all that remains is the mournful honking of the one surviving gargoyle, which learned to fly on its way down, and is now circling the battlements overhead. And now it’s my turn.
“Right. Grondor? Open that door!”
Grondor snarls, then flounces forwards and whacks the portcullis with his double-headed war axe. The physics model in here is distinctly imaginative; you shouldn’t be able to reduce a cast-iron grating into a pile of wooden kindling, but I’m not complaining. Through the portcullis we charge, into the bowels of Castle Storm and, I hope, in time to rescue Pete.
I don’t want to bore you with a blow-by-blow description of our blow-by-blow progress through Cruella’s minions. Suffice to say that following Grondor is a lot like trailing behind a frothy pink main battle tank. Thuggish guards, evil imps, and the odd adept tend to explode messily very soon after Grondor sees them. Unfortunately Grondor’s not very discriminating, so I make sure to go first in order to keep him away from cunningly engineered deadfalls (and Pete, should we find him). Still, it doesn’t take us too long to comb the lower levels of the caverns under Castle Storm (aided by the handy dungeon editor in my laptop, which allows me to build a bridge over the Chasm of Despair and tunnel through the rock around the Dragon’s Lair, which isn’t very sporting but keeps us from being toasted). Which is why, after a couple of hours, I’m beginning to get a sinking feeling that Pete isn’t actually here.
“Brains, Pete isn’t down here, is he? Or am I missing something?”
H3Y d0NT B3 5AD D00D F1N|< 0V V XP!!!
“Fuck off, Pinky, give me some useful input or just fuck off, okay?” I realize I’m shouting when the rock wall next to me begins to crack ominously. The hideous possibility that I’ve lost Pete is sinking its claws into my brain and it’s worse than any Fear spell.
OK KEEP UR HAIR 0N!! 15 THIS A QU3ST?? D0 U N33D 2 C0NFRONT S0RCR3SS 1ST?
I stop dead. “I bloody hope not. Did you notice how she was behaving?”
Brains here. I’m grepping the server logfile and did you know there’s another user connected over the intranet bridge?
“Whu—” I turn around and accidentally bump into Grondor.
Grondor says, “(1) Do you wish to modify our tactics? (2) Do you want Grondor to attack someone? (3) Do you think Grondor is sexy, big boy? (4) Exit?”
“(4),” I intone—if I leave him in a conversational state he won’t be going anywhere, dammit. “Okay, Brains. Have you tracerouted the intrusion? Bosch isn’t supposed to be accessible from outside the local network. What department are they coming in from?”
They’re coming in from—a longish pause—somewhere in HR.
“Okay, the plot just thickened. So someone in HR has gotten in. Any idea who the player is?” I’ve got a sneaking suspicion but I want to hear it from Brains—
Not IRL, but didn’t Cruella act way too flexible to be a ’bot?
Bollocks. That is what I was thinking. “Okay. Grondor: follow. We’re going upstairs to see the wicked witch.”
Now, let me tell you about castles. They don’t have