Chapter Fifteen

“Pickled Eggs and Secret Doors”

1.

“BLOODY MUTCHERS, I tell ya. All of them.”

Dolan was in a foul mood. Annabelle looked up from the cargo manifest, wondering if this was the beginning of another tirade. The Irishman, sweating from his exertions, climbed the ladder and peered over the top shelf. He slammed a foot down on every rung, and the ladder protested with every step. He held his tongue, however, and found what they were looking for.

His finger danced on the air as he counted. “Ten,” he said.

Annabelle checked the manifest again. The writing was sloppy, nearly illegible, especially in the dim light. Her eyes strained to discern what was written there. “Ten jars, pickled eggs. Large.” It didn’t say if it was the eggs that were large, or the containers which held them. Annabelle decided it was best not to ask.

She was less than twelve hours from her ordeal with the bomber. With her arm injured and in a sling, it was impossible for her to wear a dress, and so she had asked Doctor Holmes to procure for her a coverall like the men wore and a pair of sturdy boots, which he had done. Hague came by later and whisked her off to join Dolan at the quartermaster, like a guard escorting a prisoner to his prison job. By the time she had arrived, the Irishman was roaring drunk, and surly. She ached everywhere, especially her arm, which she was forced to use as a brace for the cargo manifest, and could scarcely tolerate his presence.

Apparently Dolan had not taken on this task of his own free will. The job of finding the ten missing crates, which had apparently been lost months ago and only recently reported by Griggs, the quartermaster, after falling under a threat of inspection by Hague, should also have been Hague’s responsibility. However, given Dolan’s lack of success in finding both the bomber and Annabelle’s attacker (it was still largely believed the two were separate entities) van den Bosch had tasked Dolan with finding the missing crates instead, while giving Hague command of security.

“They’re all bedevilling bloody mutchers, I tell ya,” Dolan said, and climbed down.

“So you keep saying,” Annabelle said with a sigh.

“Your friend is going to get us killed, by the by. He’s useless as tits on a boar; everyone knows it.” Dolan had been attacking everyone at random since she had arrived, starting with van den Bosch and Hague. He had only just turned his attentions onto Nathanial, but him Dolan attacked with zeal.

“Nathanial’s just being thorough, and anyway, what everyone really knows is that your Doctor van den Bosch is doing everything in his power to keep Nathanial from his goal.”

“Thoroughly going to take us to a grave, you mean!”

Just then, as if to punctuate Dolan’s thought, the station hull rumbled. It sounded like plainsong.

“If you’re done with your bellyaching, I’d like for you to finish your ridiculous survey!” This was Griggs, hidden somewhere among the towers of shelves. He, too, was drunk, and of the opinion unruly station workers had made off with his supplies while his attentions were elsewhere.

Annabelle had wanted someone far different as quartermaster. She had expected a small, neatly dressed, pernickety man who fussed over minutiae, another Hague, perhaps. The reality of Griggs was one of a squat man with a florid, seaman’s face, bald-headed, with thick, peppery whiskers. His voice was like gravel, too, every other word was a curse, and he smelled of canned sardines. He was an easily-agitated fellow, made all the more so by Dolan’s incessant complaints. Thus, the day had alternated between Dolan and Griggs occasionally taking up arms against one another, and poring through the mercilessly boring manifests, all in search of ten crates neither man believed they would ever find.

“And I’ve told you it takes as long as it takes!” Dolan yelled back.

“Ten crates, you bastard! Ten crates! Do you think you’re going to find ten bloody crates miscounted? Are you out of your bloody mind, then?”

Spit erupted from Dolan’s lips as he howled in reply. “Well, perhaps you’d like to tell the Juggernaut how you lost them, then? We’ll see how properly you bluster, then, won’t we?”

“Perhaps if ships weren’t allowed to come and go without so much as a by-your-leave, and I didn’t have men in and out of this place shift after bloody shift, I could exercise some sort of control over this warehouse!”

“It was a clerical error, you bastard!”

The argument continued. Annabelle listened a while before boredom overtook her. She put down the manifest then and wandered in the opposite direction of their voices until she could hear little of what was said.

2.

Along the floor, a few inches from the ground, was a large metal grate covering an air duct about twice as wide as she and tall enough you could stack three of her flat and still have room. The breeze from it was cool and dry. She luxuriated in the feel of it on her skin. She had not realised how much she missed the open air of Earth, having spent so much time recently in pressurized, artificial settings. When this adventure was done, and they had escaped this wretched place, she would return to Earth. Enough adventuring for a while, she decided. She wanted to rest and recuperate. She had no illusions about staying on Earth, though. Soon enough, after she had taken her first lazy nap beside a pond or spent the afternoon reading, she would start to feel the itch again. Until then, she promised to devote herself to leisure. After all, she had been pushing her luck as of late. If she was not careful, something terrible would befall her, especially if she kept on as she had been.

Just look at Loaves, she thought, with a sharp pang of regret. Her carelessness had gotten him killed. That would have been her if her luck had not held, and the men had come to investigate her cries. All that blood. The image van den Bosch had painted for her had a veritable sea of it, pooling on the floor and congealing in black lumps. It could have been hers.

She knelt next to the grate and inspected it. Sure enough, here were the tell-tale signs of tampering. Something hard had gouged the metal on the inside of the grate. This gave her an idea. She fetched a pry-bar from where she and Dolan had been working. Dolan was elsewhere, now. The argument was still going, with slurred curses being hurled from each side. She returned and put the pry-bar to use.

The grate popped out of the wall with ease, even with her working one-armed, and made little noise when it fell to the floor.

“Yes,” she said to herself. This is perfect. A perfect way to move about undetected, and a perfect way to transport the missing goods to some new location without anyone being the wiser.

The theory had been rattling about her head, but she had thus far been loathe to consider it, thinking she might be wrong. Yet, it made sense. It would do the bomber little good to move about undetected if he would take every meal in the galley, where he might be noticed. He must have come here, stolen what he needed a little at a time, and used the air ducts to transport his loot to another location, probably a lair of some kind.

She crawled inside, wondering what other secrets these air ducts might hide.