The Judge of Ages by John C. Wright

Author:John C. Wright
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, pdf
Tags: Fiction
ISBN: 9780765329295
Publisher: Tor Books
Published: 2014-02-11T08:00:00+00:00

9

Depthtrain

1. Quake

Menelaus Montrose woke to a noise of many thunders, earthquakes, and volcanoes, and voices, and he thought it was a nightmare. He was on the iron throne, and when he tried to stand, the pain in his maimed legs shot through his body like a javelin of fire, and the burns that made a patchwork of pain across his flesh seemed to ignite in reply. He was still dressed in no more than the beaded undergarment of Rada Lwa, torn, ripped, slashed, burnt, stained, bloody, and smelling of the fume of the black gas.

A Maltese Knight in powered armor stood before him, and in his gauntlet a slumber wand glowing with pink motes: the emergency thaw setting.

Menelaus sniffed, and smelled a smell that chilled his heart. It was that particular combination of heat and dust that men who work in the demolition of old buildings, buildings made of stone and concrete, recognize: the smell of solid rock being cracked, crumpled, crumbled. It is the smell, behind the gunpowder, that hangs behind a mine explosion.

“One of these days,” said Menelaus, “I am going to wake up in bed next to a pretty blond space princess. Unless she changes her hair again. What the hell, Sir Knight? When I zonked out, I had coffins rolling in here to pick up the wounded, I got the doors open, and everyone who was fighting was safely zonked out but you.”

The voice from the external speakers was Sir Guiden’s. “Also the man in red who played you—”

“Scipio Montrose. He is a great-great-whatthehellever-grandnephew or something.”

“—He was at the doors when the cave-in happened. The geophone in his sarcophagus shows that the corridor outside the big doors you jammed shut is now filled up entirely with rubble.”

“Give me some good news.”

“I performed a shutdown of the reactor core, so we are not going to die of radiation poisoning, but the quicker we get everyone into coffins for cellular cleanup and regeneration, the fewer cases of hair loss and bone marrow disease we might encounter. The bad news is that if I thaw the Blues, they can use their radio triggers to paralyze everyone.”

Another temblor rippled through the area. The stalactite-shaped chandelier which had been hanging like a loose tooth now fell in a cataclysm of crashing, breaking, shattering, and the groaning scream of tortured metal. Menelaus could not see if any petrified bodies had just been crushed. Dust filtered down from the cracked ceiling, and he could hear dozens of bullets fallen from a broken wall-gun belt clattering brightly to the floor like so many dropped marbles.

“What’s causing the cave-in?” snarled Menelaus. “This facility is supposed to be able to withstand an energy blast equivalent to one thousand sticks of dynamite without rattling a teacup on a saucer.”

“Offhand, Liege, I would say it was an energy blast equivalent to one thousand and one sticks of dynamite.”

“’Swonderful. Thaw Illiance. Scrape every single last of his gems off his coat and then and only then whack him with your wake-up stick.

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