“Do you mean beer, and cheese pies? Or beer-and-cheese pies?” Juliet glanced at her brother. “Mulch may be delirious—it’s hard to tell.”
Butler took Bobb Ragby’s gun from his belt, then tossed him bodily onto Foaly’s broad back.
“Okay. Here’s the strategy. We take Artemis and Mulch across to the Nostremius’s sick bay, then I retrieve Holly if necessary.”
Juliet’s head snapped back. “But Foaly can do—”
“Get moving,” thundered Butler. “Go immediately. I do not want to talk about it.”
“Okay. But if you’re not with us in five minutes, I’m coming after you.”
“I would appreciate that,” said Butler, propping Mulch on Foaly’s back, then the unconscious Artemis. “And if you could bring any troops you find along the way, that would be great.”
“Troops on a hospital ship?” said Foaly, trying his best not to smell what was on his back. “You’ll be lucky.”
Mulch’s tongue lolled out, resting on the centaur’s neck. “Mmm,” he mumbled around his tongue. “Horse. Tasty.”
“Let’s go,” said Foaly nervously. “Let’s go right now.”
The ambulance was a small ship compared to the massive aquanaut that loomed over them. The little craft had two levels: a sick bay and cell downstairs and on top of the spiral staircase a bridge with a small trucker’s cabin, and apart from a couple of nooks for storage and recycling, and the room in which they’d been imprisoned, that was it. Luckily for Butler and the others, the umbilical across to the Nostremius was on the bottom level.
Ching Mayle was peering across through the umbilical, obviously waiting for Holly’s return with the demon warlock.
“Please,” whispered Juliet, when they saw the goblin at the hatch, “allow me.”
Butler was holding both Artemis and Mulch steady on Foaly’s back; Bobb Ragby he was not so worried about. “Knock yourself out,” he said. “Or, rather, knock the other guy out.”
Being a wrestler, Juliet could not simply run at Ching Mayle and knock him out—she had to add a little drama.
She ran down the corridor crying hysterically, “Help me, Mr. Goblin. Save me.”
Ching removed his fingers from the bite marks on his skull he was forever scratching, which of course meant that they never healed properly.
“Uh . . . save you from what?”
Juliet sniffled. “There’s a big ugly goblin trying to stop us from leaving the ship.”
Mayle reached for his gun. “There’s a what?”
“A big ugly guy, with all these septic dents in his head.”
Ching licked his eyeballs. “Septic dents? Hey, wait a minute. . . .”
“Finally,” said Juliet, and pirouetted like an ice skater, whacking Ching Mayle with her signature jade ring. He tumbled into the umbilical passage, sliding down to the low point. Juliet caught his weapon before it hit the deck.
“One more down,” she said.
“You couldn’t just punch him in the head,” grumbled Butler, leading Foaly past her. “Boo-hoo. Help me, I’m a girl. What kind of modern woman are you?”
“A smart one,” said Juliet. “He never even got a shot off.”
Butler was not impressed. “He should never have got a hand to his gun. Next time, just hit the goblin. You’re lucky he didn’t blast you with a fireball.”
“Oh no,” said Foaly, pushing through a rope curtain that seemed to be coated with disinfectant, and into the umbilical passage. “No flame near the umbilical. This is a pressurized tube with an oxygen-helium mix, heavy on the oxygen because of the pressure. One spark in here and first we explode, then the tube ruptures and the ocean squashes us flat.”
One by one they stepped into the umbilical. It was an incredible construction. A double-skinned tube of transparent super-tough plastic, strengthened with a wrap of octagonal wire mesh. Air pumps hummed loudly along its length, and light orbs drew deep-sea creatures to it, including Artemis’s giant squid, which had wrapped itself around the umbilical’s central span and was gnawing the wire frame with its beak. Its chitin-lined suckers scraped the plastic, smearing long welts along the tube.
“Don’t worry,” said Foaly confidently. “That creature can’t get through. We’ve done a thousand stress tests.”
“With actual giant squid?” asked Juliet, understandably concerned.
“No,” admitted Foaly.
“So just computer tests, then?”
“Absolutely not,” said Foaly, offended. “We used a normal squid and a tiny umbilical model. It worked quite well until one of my dwarf lab assistants fancied some calamari.”
Juliet shuddered. “It’s just that I have a thing about giant squid.”
“Don’t we all?” said Foaly, and clopped past her down the umbilical.
The passage was fifty yards long with a slight incline at either end. The walkway beneath their feet was coated with a slightly tacky substance to prevent any accidental sparking, and there were fire-extinguishing scatter bombs at regular intervals that would automatically coat the tube with powder in the event of a fire breaking out.
Foaly pointed at one of the fire-extinguishing bombs. “In all honesty, those are for show. If so much as a spark gets loose in here, not even the squid is going to survive.”
They proceeded across to the aquanaut, feeling the cold of the ocean radiate through the walls, breathing the sharp oxygen-rich air. The Nostremius hospital ship loomed above, four stories high, curved green walls dotted by a thousand glowing portholes, anchored to the seabed by a dozen bus-sized anchors. Umbilicals stretched from several ports, and shadowy figures could be seen shuffling across from their ships to the Nostremius. It was a somber, surreal image.
Foaly led, carrying Artemis, Mulch, and a snoring Bobb Ragby, complaining every step of the way.
“Passengers. Centaurs don’t carry passengers. Just because we have a horse’s torso doesn’t mean we have a horse’s temperament. This is demeaning, that’s what it is.”
Neither Juliet nor Butler took any notice. They were in a dangerous stretch right now, and any confrontation had to be quickly contained or it could mean a watery grave for them all.
On Foaly’s back, Artemis moaned and stirred. Butler patted his shoulder.
“You just stay asleep, young man. No need to wake up now.”
As much respect as Butler had for Artemis’s abilities, he couldn’t think how they could help in this situation, especially with that angry-looking rune burned into his neck.
They were two-thirds of the way across when the hatch on the Nostremius slid open, and Holly stepped through, followed by No1.
There was no emotion in Holly’s eyes, but she calmly assessed the situation and drew the Neutrino from her holster, taking a quick bead on Butler’s forehead. From the look on her face, she could have been about to shoot a dart at a fairground target.
“No, Captain Short,” said Turnball’s voice from behind Butler. “No guns in here.”
Turnball stood at the entrance to the ambulance with Unix, as ever, at one shoulder, and Ark Sool hovering at the other.
Juliet was on rear-guard duty. “It’s the jolly pirate,” she called to her brother. “And his merry idiots. I think that without guns we’re in pretty good shape. Should I go over there and beat some respect for life into them?”
Butler held up two fingers. Wait.
This was a nightmare scenario for any bodyguard: stuck in the middle of a transparent tube, several miles underwater, with a murdering band of fugitives at one end and an enthralled but still highly skilled police officer at the other.
Poor No1 had no idea what kind of drama he had stepped into.
“Holly, what’s going on? Are we in the middle of one of your big adventures? Should I zap someone?”
Holly stood impassively waiting for instructions, but Butler heard what No1 had said. “No magic, No1. One spark could blow up this entire platform.”
No1 sighed. “Can’t you people ever just go
on a picnic or something? Do there always have to be explosions?”
Artemis moaned again, then slid from behind Mulch off Foaly’s back onto the walkway.
Standing in the doorway of the stolen shuttle ambulance, gazing down the umbilical toward Butler, Turnball realized he had a few marked cards in the deck. “Ah,” he said. “My little genius awakes. This should make our game interesting.”
Butler turned sideways to make himself a smaller target. There were to be no guns in this showdown, but there could be blades. “Go back inside,” he called to No1. “Go in and shut the hatch.”
The demon warlock tapped Holly’s shoulder. “Should I go in, Holly? Would that be the best thing to do?”
Holly did not answer, but with that touch, No1 felt the rune spell that squatted like a parasite on her mind. It seemed purple to him, and malignant, and somehow aware. In his imagination, the reptilian rune crouching on Holly’s brain snarled at him and nipped with venomous teeth.
“Oh,” said No1, withdrawing his finger sharply.
I could undo the spell, he thought. But it would be delicate work to avoid brain damage, and there would definitely be sparks.