The Ships of Durostorum

by Kenneth Bulmer

Genres: Science Fiction; Alien Contact; Space Opera

Synopsis

WANTED: ONE ENGINEER FOR MANAGERIAL POSITION IN IRUNIUM. WAGES HIGH. DEATH BENEFITS SUDDEN. "I am the Contessa Perdita di Montevarchi. Here in Irunium the only law is my will. "I shall seek out another engineer. But this time he will be a real engineer from a dimension that understands these things, from Slikitter, probably from Earth. He will be treated with respect because his function is valuable to me. Almost inevitably he will terminate as this offal terminated, but that is to be expected of imperfect tools. "He will not at first see the slaves in the mines and I do not with him treated as a slave. My mines must continue to produce gems for my trace across the Dimensions. An engineer is needed so I shall find one...."

Release date: August 6, 2012

Publisher: Gateway

Print pages: 320

Sample

ALL THE Valcini stood up respectfully when the Contessa entered the high conference room. The fear and dread in which they held her showed gauntly in their nervously-stilled gestures, their too-brightly ingratiating smiles, the way the overhead fluorescents slicked on oily foreheads.

The room itself, its narrow windows gibbeted by black and gold walls, hung in long coral drapes, breathed an air of refined cruelty. The Contessa did not deign to notice the Valcini until she had seated herself at the head of the table, sitting in a carved golden chair splayed on dragon-feet. The Valcini sat in a nervous scraping of wooden chairs. She looked on them and was not pleased.

“So there has been another accident in my mines.”

Her soft syrupy voice twitched ripples of fear along the men’s nerves. They wiped sweaty hands furtively on their fawn slacks and shirts.

“The accident could not be helped, Contessa—” began a gray-haired Valcini sitting at her right hand, his bulky face taut with strain, his lips shining bluely.

“Could not be helped! Why do you think I let you live? Why is it that you Valcini live and batten on my bounty? For love of you?”

They could not answer.

Her white face smooth and soft with costly ministrations, her violet eyes wide and seductive, her rose-bud mouth too soft and scarlet-sweet, she glanced around the circle of men at the table with sugary venom. Clad all in white in a silken robe that fell sheer from her shoulders and with her dark hair high-coifed and sprinkled with a treasury of gems, she dominated that room of fierce and cruel men. She jerked the chain attached to a bracelet around her left wrist.

“We take delight in serving you, Contessa.” The senior Valcini spoke with a humbleness past all toadying.

“I hope you do, Doeltor. For your sake.”

“The accident was caused by a cave-in on the new workings.” Doeltor gestured vaguely. “We Valcini employ out-world labor for mining and sometimes the labor is unintelligent—”

“Sometimes!”

Her disgusted exclamation followed by a vicious tug at the chain attached to her left wrist brought a whimpering cry from the creature bound by a necklet to the other end of the chain. His red velvet suit made him look a ghastly parody of an organ-grinder’s monkey. His enormous domed head, partially covered by a blue velvet cap with a feather broken at the tip, looked lumpy and skintight over a massive skull.

“Quiet, Soloman!” Her sugary voice thickened. “Bring in the engineer responsible.”

The double doors opened in a clash of bronze.

Honshi guards, their wide frog-faces staring, hustled in the cringing form of a man clad in a gray tunic. Smears of dirt and blood stained the gray cloth. The Honshi prodded him forward with their barbed spears, hissing: “Hoshoo! Hoshoo!”

“So this is the miserable specimen—look up, gandyschell, look up at me.”

The engineer whose brown face showed a gray parched horror and a despairing dread turned his eyes up, the whites bloodshot. He licked spittle. One arm hung broken and unsplinted at his side. He moaned.

“Pynchon, isn’t it? Chief Mining Engineer Pynchon? There has been another accident in my mine, Pynchon. Slaves are dead, Pynchon, slaves who cost a great deal to bring here across the Dimensions. Many weeks’ work have been lost, Pynchon. What do you say, Pynchon, to me, about these bad things?”

“I am—sorry—Contessa.”

“Sorry. I see. And?”

“The tools are bad, Contessa. Only the Erinelds know real mining. The slaves are unwilling—”

“You have whips and guards to use them. I hear the seam you were following turned and you did not allow for this and you undercut into the biscuit band and then you brought down the duricrust.”

The engineer let his head droop in defeat.

“I shall not be cruel to you, Pynchon. Many people say I am wantonly cruel; but this is not so. I shall be kind to you, Pynchon.” She gestured negligently to the nearest Honshi guard. “Kill him, now.”

The short stabbing sword went in steel bright and came out blood red.

Pynchon grasped his spilling intestines and fell on his face, dead.

Honshi guards, the withered scraps of human hair and skin fleering from their helmet spikes, cleared away the mess. The woman in white did not look once, but sat, her fist knuckling her smooth chin, brooding.

Then she stared icily at the waiting Valcini.

“I,” she said with conscious pride and arrogance. “I am the Contessa Perdita Francesca Cammachia di Montevarchi. Here in Irunium the only law is my will.”

Sleekly oiled heads nodded eager confirmation.

“I shall seek out another engineer. But this time he will be a real engineer from a Dimension that understands these things, from Slikitter, probably from Earth. He will be treated with respect because his function is valuable to me. Almost inevitably he will terminate as this offal terminated; but that is to be expected of imperfect tools.”

“Yes, Contessa.”

“He will not at first see the slaves in the mines and I do not wish him treated as a slave. Is that understood?”

“Yes, Contessa.”

She stood up, jerking the glittering silvery chain so that Soloman whimpered and jumped after her like a scuttling pug dog.

“Very well. My mines must continue to produce gems for my trade across the Dimensions. An engineer is needed so I shall find one. I shall take a guard and—ah—Charnock.” She flayed them with her eyes. “And where best to look for a mining engineer than in a mine?”

WHEN THE disaster sirens ripped the night sky apart all over Hodson, J. T. Wilkie was in no position to hear them. His position, apart from being highly undignified and extremely dangerous, was also extraordinarily uncomfortable.

Up top, the firetrucks, the ambulances, the rescue teams would be hurtling through the cold and raucous Canadian night toward the Old Smokey pithead where the flames would be shooting up like blasphemous flowers of evil. Up there all the taut nerve-pulsing drama of a major mine disaster would be unleashed.

Down below, J. T. Wilkie tried to pull his head out of the tracks of the Joy Continuous-miner by bracing his trapped arms against the warm metal tracks and the coal-encrusted clay floor. Coal dust and smoke filled his eyes and nose and ears and mouth and bells ding-donged in his head like deranged tramcars. Through the room and pillar workings of Old Smokey sharp dust clouds billowed on the skirts of the explosion shockwave that had hurled J. T. into his present ludicrous and perilous position.

He knew he didn’t have time to feel fear; he had to get his head out before he choked to death. With a final tremendous pull that nearly tore his ears off he wrenched out and staggered back from the Joy to crash into the miraculously still-intact wall. The pillar thickness here had been fined down to its near-limits and a certain amount of goaf lay about. Inevitably, J. T. Wilkie crashed headlong over the waste.

Absolute blackness clamped down. Somewhere a man screamed; very soon that sound died.

His eyes felt as though grit the size of best nuts clogged under the lids. He fumbled around for the flashlight slung on his belt and blinked painfully as a shaft of white light cut into the swirling black miasma.

He endured a coughing spell, and spat gobbets of black. He felt as though someone had run him clean through the works of the Joy.

“Is that you, J. T.?”

The voice coughed up from a shining splintered pile of freshly-broken coal fallen from the roof. Dust coiled as Wilkie lurched across.

“Polak? Is that you, Polak?”

“Yeah.”

The heap of coal heaved and like a minor subterranean explosion in itself the burly coal-blackened form of a man wrenched free. J. T. grabbed a thick arm and heaved.

“I might have guessed.” He coughed, the tears running down his face and signally failing to cut grooves in the sweat-packed coal grime. “It’d take more than a mine explosion to kill you, Polak.”

“Damn right. Anyone else—?”

In the flashlight gleam Wilkie shook his head. “’Fraid not.”

Polak shook himself and then switched on his own helmet light. All the main lamps in the road had died when the roof smashed down.

“We’re cut off down here, Polak.” Wilkie stated the obvious. “The bang went off down number ten road, I think. We caught the backlash.” He grunted with furious resentment. “This ought to teach me to come to the face—”

“You’re always too eager, boy,” rumbled Polak. “You should’ve left the real mining to pitmen. You civil engineers and your fancy machines—”

“Go on, say it,” Wilkie snapped back. He humped around and sat down heavily on the motionless Joy. Its multiple engines had long since stopped. “Blame mining machinery for this mess. If you’d been working with hand and pick, like you always talk about—this would never have happened—eh?”

“They had accidents back in the old country. By damn, J. T., we’re in one hell of a mess!”

“They’ll get us out. How far can we go back?”

The lights showed the answer to that. The square-cut corners of the room showed sharp through the dust on two sides. On the third the roadways lay piled roof-high with cascaded coal. The lights flicked around eerily as the dust settled.

Polak coughed and spat.

“We could try the conveyor—”

“That’s out. It just disappears under a pile of filling.”

They were stuck down here, in this small choked room, with only the Continuous-miner with its ripper head and cruel fanged chains for company.

Polak stumbled in the erratic light across to the sheer wall. He picked up a crowbar that had been flung so hard it had bent to a forty-five degree angle, and bashed against the wall. He waited. Then he bashed again. The concussions made J. T.’s head ache.

At last the big man threw down the bar disgustedly.

“Not a cheep—”

“They’ll find us. They’ll sink a bore down—it’s the air I’m worried about.”

Polak grunted. “You’re the engineer, boy, even if you’re only still learning.”

“I’m a mining engineer,” Wilkie protested, stung. “I’ve got a diploma to prove it.”

“Sure. A scrap of paper. Well, wave it now and get us out of here.”

“Huh.”

There followed a long period of waiting, punctuated by intermittent bashings of the wall by Polak. Each time they listened for any answering kn. . .