“What’s happening?” asks Noble, confused.
“We’ve arrived. At our disembarkation port,” the Master informs him.
“You mean we’ve reached Mikey’s computer?”
“That’s correct.” Placing his hands on his hips, the Master regards Noble with narrowed eyes. “So the question is: What do we do now? Play it by the book, or do it your way?”
“Give me a chance,” Noble pleads. He can hear clattering footsteps and raised voices in the passage outside. “I want to stop Rufus just as much as you do.”
The Master grunts. “Maybe,” he says. “Or maybe you want to get in there first, so you can warn him.”
“And abandon my friends?” Noble shakes his head fiercely. “I know Rufus. I know where he’ll be, and I know what to say to him. It’s what I’m here for.”
He’s surprised at the impact his last statement has. It snags the Master like a fishhook.
“Oh! I didn’t realize … you mean … are you an update?” the Master says.
“That’s right!” Yestin jumps in before Noble can utter a word. “He’s an attack signature update. He’s like an advance advance guard. He knows just what to look for and where to do it.”
“Well, why didn’t you say so?” The Master squints through all the milling bodies that separate him from the cabin door. “I need an escort!” he barks, then grabs the Disk Commander. “This guy’s a signature update. We need to get him docked.”
“Will do,” the Disk Commander replies. He promptly starts to bellow orders, creating a path through the crowd with nothing but the sheer force of his mighty lungs. Together, he, the Master, and a small squad of soldiers escort Noble up to the boat deck, bundling him through hatches, pushing him up companionways, and steering him between bulkheads. Noble begins to feel like a bag of supplies as he’s passed from hand to hand. Lorellina and Yestin try to keep up, though it’s hard because of the press of people.
At one point, they manage a brief conversation while they’re waiting for a clogged passageway to clear.
“Are you going to bring Rufus back to the ship?” Lorellina asks Noble in a low voice.
“I’ll have to,” Noble says, fending off an armored knight with one elbow.
“But what if they kill him?”
“They’ll kill him, all right,” Yestin observes flatly. “They might put him in quarantine first, but then they’ll kill him.”
“Not if he agrees to help.” Noble shoots a quick glance over his shoulder, to make sure no one else is listening. Then he adds softly, “If I talk to Rufus and make him see that he’s been wrong, then he might give himself up. In exchange for clemency.”
“You think?” Yestin seems doubtful. Even the princess doesn’t look convinced.
“He might lie to save his own life,” she warns.
“Not if he doesn’t realize he’s in danger.” Seeing her green eyes widen, Noble explains, with some reluctance, “He won’t know where I came from. Why should he?”
“You mean you’re not going to tell him you’ve been on the rescue drive?” Yestin whispers in amazement.
“Not at first,” Noble admits.
“So by lying to him, you would save all the rest?” Lorellina’s troubled tone makes Noble defensive.
“I won’t lie,” he insists. “I simply won’t tell him the whole truth, that’s all.”
“Rufus didn’t tell us the whole truth,” Yestin reminds her, just as the blockage ahead of them clears. Noble finds himself swept off his feet and carried along in a tide of uniforms. After bouncing off a couple of painted metal bulkheads, he finally pops through a hatchway and emerges onto an open deck with a coastal view.
Almost everything around him is gray. The ship is gray; the sky is gray; the listless-looking sea is gray. Gray pebbles line the nearest shore, beyond which stretches a desolate landscape. Trees have been reduced to blackened stumps. Roads are rivers of dry mud, as gray as ash. The same mud coats every wrecked vehicle and weathered corpse scattered among the foundations of razed buildings.
The light is bleak, the silence oppressive. The only sound is the slap and hiss of sluggish waves. There are no birds. The air is absolutely still.
The crowded deck is hushed, as everyone gazes in awe at the barren countryside.
“That’s it,” the Master finally remarks. He’s standing beside Noble. “That’s our port.”
“W-what happened to it?” Noble stammers.
The Master shrugs, then turns to the Disk Commander. “What do you think?”
“I don’t think it’s blocked,” the Disk Commander replies. “We just received a reset signal from a controller somewhere.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“She said, ‘Kick back, reset, and join the party!’ ” With a snort, the Commander concludes, “She sounded drunk.”
“So let’s send in a packet.”
“Bulk transfer?”
“Naw, not yet …”
As orders are given for a boat to be winched overboard, Noble slips the AV’s key into Lorellina’s palm. “Here. You have this,” he tells her. “I don’t want Rufus seeing it.”
She takes the key, but seems more interested in the view. “Do you recognize this place?” she asks, nodding at the gray horizon. When Noble shakes his head, she says, “Then how are you going to find the Kernel?”
Noble has already worked out how he’s going to find the Kernel. It came to him in a flash, without warning, on his way to the upper deck. He pats the waistband of his breeches, where the Kernel’s key is still nestling in a seam. “If I can find a door,” he says, “I can find the Kernel.”
“All ashore that’s going ashore!” someone cries. The Master beckons to Noble, who gently squeezes Lorellina’s hand.
“Be careful,” she pleads.
“I will.”
“Come back for us.”
“Always.” Noble gazes into her eyes for a moment, marveling at their beauty. It seems fitting that he should kiss her again, so he does. Then he claps Yestin on the shoulder, trying not to look at the boy’s anxious face. “Look after the princess,” he tells Yestin. “I’m counting on you.”
“Okay.”
“And don’t worry. I won’t be long.”
A corridor has been cleared through the press of bodies on deck, giving Noble a clear view of the boat that awaits him. It’s hanging from two sturdy cables, rocking slightly as the larger vessel rolls with the motion of a gentle swell. The boat is already occupied. A large dog is sharing it with someone wearing a shiny yellow cape.
As Noble strides toward them, a shrill whistle suddenly rends the air.
“We’re piping you ashore,” the Master announces. “Stream piping, in fact. This is your chip.” He indicates the man in yellow. “The chip will execute the transfer and then wait for you. We’ll all be waiting.”
“Yes.” Noble studies the yawning gap between the boat and the ship’s rail. “I understand.”
“Just don’t keep us waiting too long, all right?”
“I won’t.”
“Off you go, then!” The Master raises his voice. “Someone give him a hand—we don’t want him crashing.”
The man in yellow reaches for Noble, who mounts the rail and launches himself wildly into the boat. There’s a nasty moment as the boat swings and jerks like a fish on a line, triggering a volley of barks from the chip’s dog. But Noble soon finds a steady footing. With the chip’s help he sits in the bow, then clings to a gunwale while the boat is lowered clumsily into the water.
The beach is quite close. Noble realizes that he probably could have swum to it, given the chance. He’s expecting the chip to produce a couple of oars and row; instead, the silent seaman yanks at a string attached to some sort of machine that’s been mounted on the stern like a second rudder. After grumbling a few times, this machine suddenly unleashes a snarling roar. At the same instant, the boat lunges forward.
Noble nearly loses his balance. He has to grab the prow and brace h
imself as the chip steers toward dry land. Glancing back over his shoulder, Noble searches for Lorellina’s pale face and red hair among the crowds clustered along the side of the ship. But he can’t see the princess. He can’t see Yestin, either. There are too many people, and he’s already too far away.
So he fixes his attention on the shore up ahead, which is soon scraping under the boat’s keel. The chip immediately leaps overboard. He begins to haul his craft onto the dry beach, his white teeth framed by a bristling black beard, his eyes almost invisible beneath the wide brim of his yellow hat. “Can ye not move yer limbs?” he snaps at Noble, who quickly scrambles into the surf, taking up a position on the opposite side of the boat. Together, they drag the vessel free of the sucking tide, while the chip’s dog sits and watches.
It’s the chip who stops heaving first. “Avast!” he growls at Noble. Straightening up, Noble turns his head to study the grimly unwelcoming scene that lies before him. The dead trees and scattered bones remind him of Morwood. But Noble can’t remember seeing wrecked vehicles or collapsed fences in Morwood. And in Morwood he always used to walk on flesh and salt, not stones and ash.
“Away and go,” says the chip. “I’ll not be here forever.”
Noble nods. He begins to trudge across the wide strip of pebbles, his hand straying once again to his waistband. But he hasn’t lost his precious key. It’s still there, safe and sound—his tiny, hidden escape route.
The question is: Where will he find a door to unlock, in this deserted, battle-scarred wasteland?
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Noble stands on the fringes of a ruined hamlet, assessing the terrain spread out before him. No birds are twittering. No wind is blowing. The very shadows seem to throb with menace.
Once again, he’s alone in barren, hostile territory—only this time he doesn’t have Smite. This time, he doesn’t even have boots. And instead of saving the princess, he now has to save the computer.
But he has to find Rufus before he can do that.
From where he’s standing, he can’t see the beach anymore. The ship is masked by a low ridge that’s dotted with craters and scorch marks. Having decided to follow the most obvious route inland—a track like a river of dry mud—Noble was at first quite pleased to stumble upon a burned-out village. Now he’s not feeling quite so hopeful. The buildings in front of him contain only empty doorways, gaping like mouths. Even the sills and doorjambs are missing.
Has every stick of wood in the place been consumed by fire?
Noble advances cautiously, weaving his way between large, jagged chunks of blackened stonework. There isn’t a roof in sight, and the narrow, winding streets are sometimes hard to distinguish from the equally exposed, equally filthy, equally narrow rooms and corridors. It’s like walking through a maze. He can’t help feeling as if he’s about to be ambushed. If he were back in Morwood, something would be lurking behind every rock, waiting to kill him.
This place, however, seems totally abandoned. A few clay pots and rusty tools lie half-buried in the ash and debris, but not a single piece of furniture or scrap of cloth remains. There aren’t any bones, either. Noble is glad about that. If there are no bones, he thinks, the people who lived here must have escaped with their lives.
Then he hears something strange, and stops in his tracks.
It’s a crunching, crackling, rattling sound. Noble suspects that it might be falling rubble, but he can’t be certain because he can’t see through the walls up ahead. Is it somebody digging? Somebody scavenging? It can’t be the wind. There is no wind.
He advances toward the nearest corner, moving slowly and carefully, grateful for the padding of ash beneath his bare feet. With every step he takes, the noise grows louder and more complex. There are clicks and shuffles, snorts and thumps. Could it be a horse? Two horses? Finally, he reaches a gap that might have been a doorway once, though it’s now just a crumbling hole. Craning his neck, he peers around the edge of the hole … and suddenly understands where all the bones must have gone.
A giant bug is gnawing at the charred stub of a roof beam. With large front claws, multiple legs, a shiny black carapace, and a long, ridged body, this bug looks like a cross between a crab and millipede. Its eyes sit up on stalks, and its mouth is fringed with tentacles. When splinters of wood spill from between its teeth, the surrounding tentacles sweep every fragment back into the bug’s slavering maw. Chunks of stone, however, are always rejected. They fall to earth, sticky with saliva.
Noble ducks for cover again, having seen everything he needs to see. Though the bug has left a trail of destruction in its wake, it hasn’t yet demolished the entire stock of wood in the village. There’s another room, just beyond the roofless space occupied by the bug, which still contains joists and window frames and sticks of furniture. It even contains a closed door. Noble has a good view of this door, thanks to a large hole in the wall that separates the bug’s room from the undamaged one next to it. But he’s well aware that no door, however solid, is going to last for long. Not with a giant, omnivorous bug in its vicinity.
He has to reach that door before the bug does.
It’s going to be a tricky maneuver. For one thing, the bug might eat people. For another, it’s almost blocking Noble’s path. So he doesn’t just hurl himself wildly into the open. Instead, he prepares very carefully, first removing the Kernel’s key from its hiding place, then casting around for a weapon of some kind. He settles at last on a sharp-edged stone. That should buy him some time, if nothing else.
Finally, he feels ready to make his move. He takes a deep breath, tightens his grip on the key, and charges through the opening next to him—only to discover that the bug, having polished off its last morsel of roof beam, is now heading straight for the hole that happens to be Noble’s destination.
Noble wins the race by a hair. There’s a furious clicking noise as he pounds past the bug, which is slower than he is because it’s so big. It makes a lunge for him and misses. He hears the thud and scrape of a giant claw striking solid rock, then the patter of dislodged mortar hitting the ground. But he doesn’t stop to look back.
The door is just ahead of him. Made of four large planks held together by crossbars, it has black iron hinges and a matching lock. He dives under a carved wooden table that’s barring his way, then slides across the floor, jumps up, and thrusts his key in the lock. Behind him, he can hear the crash and roar of tumbling masonry. Dust fills the air. As he turns his key, the carved table is tossed at a nearby wall, smashing into a dozen pieces.
Then something grabs Noble’s leg.
Whisked off his feet, he suddenly finds himself dangling upside down, suspended in the grip of a claw as big as he is. With its other claw, the bug is busily wrenching the door from its hinges. Three or four yanks is all it takes. Soon the door is being hefted into the air, still in its frame. And before Noble can do more than observe that his key is where he left it, he’s thrown straight into the bug’s mouth.
Splat!
During the split second it takes him to work out what’s happening, only one thought crosses his mind: This is it. He’s not surprised. As Noble the Slayer, he was probably fated to be eaten by a monster. Or skewered by a skeleton. Or zapped by a magician’s spell. He never really thought that he would perish sedately, in bed, with grieving friends all around him.…
He’s lucky, though. The bug is so greedy that it doesn’t bother to chew or swallow before taking another bite. Instead, it shoves the door straight in after him, wedging the entire thing between its upper and lower jaws. For an instant, it can’t close its mouth. And being a slightly stupid creature, it has to pause—and think—before realizing that it needs to bite down firmly.
Noble takes advantage of this three-second lull. When he sees the door right in front of him, he doesn’t waste time thinking. He simply gives it a push. Not that he’s expecting much; it’s simply a reflex action. If anything, he’s vaguely hopeful that he might have just enough time to fling himself thr
ough the open doorway before its mouth snaps shut again.
He certainly isn’t planning to stumble across a threshold into a ruined prison cell.
But that’s exactly what he does. The door opens, he steps through it—and suddenly he’s in the Kernel’s lair. He knows the place instantly. He recognizes the smashed prison cell, with its crumpled, steel-bar door lying on the ground. Even more familiar is the scene beyond it; there’s no mistaking the painted brickwork, the metal doors, the tubes of light, the bundled pipes on the ceiling.…
Whirling around, Noble slams the door on his last glimpse of the bug’s slimy gullet. Then he staggers forward, gasping for breath. His head is still spinning from the narrow escape he’s just had. He doesn’t even try to figure out how he managed to save himself. He’s too busy wondering how he’s going to save the computer.
Because it’s starting to fall apart. He can tell that from the state of the hallway he’s entered, which is rapidly disintegrating. The lights are mostly off, though one or two still flicker feebly. The floor is partially flooded with some kind of sticky blue substance. The ceiling is melting. The doors are buckling. One of them even explodes across the hallway in front of Noble, quite suddenly, as if it’s been waiting for him to arrive. It crashes into the opposite wall, bringing down a few bricks—which bounce off the floor like jelly. Then an ogre emerges through the shattered door frame. Pausing for a moment in the passage, the dark, hairy, misshapen creature glares at Noble with ruby-red eyes, its long arms trailing on the ground.
Noble glares right back. Having just fought his way out of a giant bug’s mouth, he’s in no mood to let a stunted-looking ogre walk all over him. And this grim resolve must show in his expression, because the ogre abruptly turns away. It begins to stump down the corridor, through the pool of goo, toward the sound of distant music.
Noble hesitates for a moment before setting off in the same direction.
He can hear screams as well as music, though he can’t tell whether they’re screams of fear or delight. An occasional sharp retort could be either a collision or an explosion. A donkey seems to be braying somewhere. A gravelly mutter comes from the ogre, which grumbles to itself as it trudges along. Noble can’t understand what it’s saying. It seems to be speaking in a foreign language.