Chapter Thirty-One

“A Reversal of Fortunes”

1.

“I have a story to tell, Nathanial, but I have no time to tell it.”

He peeked through a small crack in the door. The workers were coming up from the dorms and filing toward British. The memorial service would take place in the galley, the only room large enough to hold everyone at once. He would give them another ten minutes to get settled. That should relieve the burden of any possible stragglers interrupting his work.

Nathanial slid the door closed and looked at Annabelle, who sat at the table near his cot. Her face and body appeared as if it had been in a war. She was dressed in a blue coverall with boots matching those of the men on the station, and the front of the coverall was stained with drying blood. Her arm, still in the bandage, looked swollen. The fingers on that hand were red and splotchy, perhaps from poor circulation. Her black hair was mussed and caked in places to the back of her head with brown, dried blood where she said someone―probably Dolan―had struck her. And her face had a number of new bruises on them. She had declined to reveal how she had received them. Nathanial could not help but wonder if Dolan had given her those, too.

Damn the man! It did not matter that the Irishman was dead. Nathanial wanted more justice for the man. Death, no matter how brutal it might have been (and given the bloodstains on her coverall, it had not been painless), whatever he had got was not enough.

“Are you all right, Annabelle?”

“My head hurts. I’ve injured it twice since we came here. Ah, I must look a mess, don’t I?”

“We should let Doctor Holmes examine you.”

“No. There’s no time.”

“I don’t fancy this, Annabelle,” he said. “I can’t tell you how I’ve worked these past eleven days to save Peregrine Station from the vortex, and now you want me to undo what I’ve done.”

“I’m sorry, Nathanial. We can’t allow Le Boeuf to succeed.”

“It just doesn’t make any sense. What is the term you enjoy so? ‘You must empty out the bathing-tub, but not the baby with it’? It seems we are doing that.”

Annabelle sighed. She looked as if she had not slept in days, either, though she appeared much the worse for wear. “We have no choice.”

“This conspiracy you imagine cannot compare with what they have planned. You say van den Bosch calls Le Boeuf the Devil. I say he is right. I’ve seen it. Dolan told me what they will do. We were supposed to die, you see, and no one was ever to know about Torquilstone, at least not until it was too late.”

“We do have a choice,” Nathanial said. “You say Le Boeuf has more agents here.”

“More than you or I could possibly find.”

“But we have to try.”

“Nathanial, we have to do this before they regroup. Don’t you see? Once Le Boeuf learns you survived, he’s going to try and kill you. We don’t have time for a witch hunt. We have to get everyone off this station, and within the hour, or he will find a way to escape onto one of the cutters. You know he can disguise his appearance. He’ll find a way.” Tears welled up in her eyes. “You don’t understand, do you?” She wept, and the tears shook loose onto her cheeks. “Please, Nathanial. He can’t be allowed to escape!”

Twice now he had seen her cry, once tears of sorrow, now tears of desperation. Nathanial went to her and drew her close. She accepted his touch and hugged herself against his side, burying her face into his lapel.

“The French Commune. They’ve unwittingly financed Torquilstone from the beginning. I don’t know what sort of sum van den Bosch paid Professor Wren, but it was not for the aether machine. The French believe Le Boeuf and his men are here to disrupt communications between Earth and Mars. They arranged for him to be smuggled onto the station and provided him the equipment he needed. They had no idea that he planned to build such a device while here. I don’t think even they would have agreed if they knew what Le Boeuf has planned!”

“I’ve seen Torquilstone, Annabelle. I know its capabilities.”

“Do you?”

The minutes passed, and soon it was time to begin. He peeked outside one last time to make certain everyone was safely within the galley. When he was reasonably sure the halls were clear, Nathanial and Annabelle snuck out into the corridor. In the pocket of his trousers he had Annabelle’s derringer, now. She had pulled it from Dolan’s corpse, she’d said as she gave it over in exchange for the Bowie knife.

“You’d get killed trying to use it,” she’d said of the knife. “Take the gun. Try to be within short range when you fire. It’s more effective, then.”

2.

They set a brisk pace through the basilica. Nathanial was nervous. He wanted to run, but Annabelle was in no shape for it. She also insisted on carrying Nathanial’s satchel, even though he had been of a mind to leave it behind. That she was able to match his quick step seemed a miracle.

“I’ve been through many trials the past two weeks, but it’s been worth it. I know what must be done, Nathanial. You may not want to believe any of it at first, but I ask you to trust me. You must trust me. If you don’t, Le Boeuf is going to bring something into the world that will eventually destroy it.”

They passed the galley. The doors were slid closed. From inside came the buzz of two hundred or more workers talking amongst themselves before the service began. Good, Nathanial thought. They had an hour, at least. More than enough time to do what needed doing.

Fullbright’s quarters were next to van den Bosch’s. Nathanial could imagine the Juggernaut was still abed. He doubted the man would have even wanted to attend the service if he had been of good health. Pressing an ear to the wall, Nathaniel heard the man’s deep snores, confirming his suspicion.

Inside Fullbright’s quarters, Nathanial riffled his friend’s possession until he located the station log, which Fullbright had dutifully kept every day since he had first come aboard. Finding the information they needed, Nathanial and Annabelle left British and returned to Austrian, heading straight to Sunward Observation.

3.

Nathanial went to Operations, a station along the left wall facing the viewport. The controls here were unfamiliar to him, but that was not an insurmountable problem. He located the stabiliser controls and studied them. The coordinates next to each control told him what he needed to know. Using the controls he fired the stabilisers, laying in a course for the aether vortex’s last known position, adjusted for time and velocity. Furthermore, he boosted the station’s own velocity to many times what it had been during the past twelve days, when they were drifting toward the vortex to begin with.

He stepped back, and Annabelle ruined the controls with the handle of her Bowie knife.

“It’s a power source. I abhor his methods for its construction, using subterfuge, terror, and even murder, but I cannot help but admire what Le Boeuf has created. It’s a grand device, and it might even one day see use. Imagine what can be done with it.”

“You’re a decent man, Nathanial Stone. You see Torquilstone and think of how it can be used for the greater good. You imagine a better England, a better Earth. But you are naive. You haven’t seen horror yet. Oh, you’ve seen dangers aplenty, but you’ve never seen a blanket smother the child it’s swaddling or the spoon that chokes the starving man.”

“Quit speaking in such ways, Annabelle. This is not you at all. Come to your senses and talk plainly, or I will drag you to see Holmes.”

“A weapon, Nathanial. Le Boeuf is going to use the Torquilstone power source to build a weapon, and he’s going to turn it on England. Dolan told me. ‘England will be the New Atlantis, burning as it falls into the sea.’ That’s what he said.”

“My God…”

“We have to destroy it, Nathanial. We have to destroy Torquilstone, and the only way to do it, the only way it can be accomplished without Le Boeuf’s agents murdering us before we’ve had our chance, is to do it now and to send it―and this station―into the vortex.”

“My God…”

“And Le Boeuf. Nathanial, he can’t be allowed to escape. If he escapes, he’ll take the secret with him, and he’ll rebuild Torquilstone. Once that sort of device is unleashed on the world, even if he’s stopped, nations will destroy each other trying to possess it. It will be like Pandora’s Box, releasing evil onto the world. And once the box is opened…”

Nathanial let out a long sigh, feeling the tension in his shoulders. Regret wanted to overwhelm him, but he had no time for it. “Holmes is going to be upset when we interrupt the service, but we need to act as quickly as possible. We have perhaps two hours before the station strikes the vortex’s outer edge.”

Annabelle shook her head. “Not half as angry as Fullbright will be when he finds out you’ve destroyed the station.” She took Nathanial’s arm then. “We should get moving, then. There’s a lot to do in a short time.”

“Agreed. Let’s find Holmes and the others, and let’s leave this miserable place, once and for all.”

They had started down the stairs to the deck when a shot rang out. Annabelle cried out and fell over, grasping at her leg just below the knee.

Nathanial looked up from her to see a man dressed in Professor Wren’s ragged clothes, though the man no longer wore Wren’s ghastly face. In its place was the face of a handsome, distinguished gentleman with a charismatic cast to his eyes. His black hair, slightly receding, was oiled back against his scalp and slightly greying at the temples.

“Le Boeuf,” Nathanial said.

The man raised his pistol, pointing it at Nathanial’s head. “Professor Stone,” he said. “We meet at last.”