Holes in the Ground (39 page)

“It’s okay,” said Sun. “I was once in the same environment. I understand cabin fever all too well.”

“Well, I apologise sincerely. Anything you need, just let me know.”

“Now that you mention it,” said Andy. “We were hoping to get your help with something.”

“Yes?”

“We want to move Lucas and the batling into the same cell. I want to see how they interact, if they are familiar with one another.”

Gorman’s eyes went unnaturally wide. “You want to place two different guests in the same cell? Are you both insane?”

Andy sighed.
Didn’t take her long to lose her temper again.

“We think it’s the best way to find out if Lucas is here because of the batling or vice-versa. We need to know if they are here for related reasons.”

Gorman rubbed at her forehead and let out a long breath. When she looked at them again, she was calmer, but it seemed forced. “Okay, okay. I hope you can excuse my surprise. It’s just that we’ve never attempted such a thing down here before—least of all with the guests of level 10. But if that’s what you want to do, then it is my duty to accommodate you.”

“Did General Kane make you realise that?” said Sun, somewhat sarcastically.

Andy shot his wife a glance.
Don’t poke the bear, honey.

A smile crept across Gorman’s face. “You’re not wrong. My discussion in General Kane’s office was
enlightening.
Now, when were you hoping to achieve this feat of insane peril?”

“We were hoping to get it done this afternoon,” said Andy. “Sooner the better.”

“Of course, why wait and plan when you can rush right in. Let us get started then.”

“So you’re happy to help us?” Andy asked, somewhat suspiciously.

Gorman stared at him and raised both her eyebrows. “Of course, I’m happy to help, Mr Dennison. If I don’t then only the worst will happen. The sooner you get going, the sooner we can move things forwards. I’m very much looking forward to how this will all end.”

Dr Gorman walked between Sun and Andy and left the labs. Sun was frowning at Andy and he asked her what was wrong.

“Nothing,” she said. “Just wondering what she means by the word ‘end.”’

“They want to do
what?
” Kane wasn’t sure that he had just heard correctly.

Rimmer folded his arms across his wide chest and checked his watch. “It’s not necessarily a bad idea. I agree with them when they say the Mick turning up the same time as the batling is too much of a coincidence to be
just a coincidence
.”

“Of all people, I wouldn’t expect you to agree with this. It’s an unnecessary risk to security.”

Rimmer chewed the side of his cheek, thought about it, and then said, “Sometimes a risk is the only option left. In Iraq we would have been dead in the water without interrogating prisoners. What the Dennisons are suggesting makes some sense. I remember shoving a couple of Iraqi soldiers in a cell together once and watching them go at it. They were long-time enemies, but both loyally served Saddam. As one spat accusations and insults at the other, the other one would spit them right back. By the end of the day we had eavesdropped enough information to know the names of their entire families and half their friends. We also knew that one of the men was responsible for a botched attack on a US base. His enemy straight-out insulted him for his incompetence in failing in his mission. You’d be surprised how much you can get the enemy to do your work for you if manoeuvred correctly.”

Kane ran his palms over the surface of his desk, enjoying the feeling of the wood grain against his calloused hands. “You think this is what this is? Putting two enemies together to see what we can overhear?”

“Among other benefits,” said Rimmer.

“Such as?”

“They might tear each other apart. Two less monsters for us to deal with.”

Kane huffed, but couldn’t help but smile. He always appreciated Rimmer’s straight-forward view of things. “It’s our job to house these creatures safely, Sergeant. While I don’t disagree with your sentiment, I swore an oath to keep those monsters safely locked up in their cages.”

Rimmer nodded, he unfolded his arms and put them into his pockets. “All I’m saying, sir, is that if we go into things with the best of intentions—to gain Intel—and something
unforeseen
happens, well, then nobody has anything to feel guilty about. Shit happens, as they say.”

Kane leant back in his chair and nodded. “You know that there are more of those things? The faustlings, I mean. We have over a dozen of them at our other facilities.”

Rimmer nodded. “I know.”

“You do? How?”

“I have my sources. It pays to know people working at other facilities. It can give a heads up on any potential issues that may arise.”

Kane was getting a little irritated by his staff knowing things above their pay grade, but he supposed in Rimmer’s case it made sense. It was the man’s job to know things. “Then you understand that we need to learn more about those things. We need, more than anything, to learn what we can while we can. They’re planning something.”

“With all due respect, sir. I think the most important thing to learn about those things is how to kill them. Perhaps putting the Mick in with our own faustling will shine some light on how to achieve said termination.”

Kane thought about it and nodded his head at Rimmer. “Get it done. But get it done safely. Keep an eye on the Dennisons, and the English boy especially.”

Rimmer deadpanned. “Of course. Should there be anything
unforeseen
due to happen to them?”

Kane deadpanned right back. “Not until they’re done.”

“And when will that be?”

Kane picked up the papers on his desk and shuffled them. “When I say they are.”

Andy was standing with Sun and Dr Gorman as two of Rimmer’s men appeared in the hallway of subbasement 10 with a thick roll of steel mesh. Rimmer was with them, and broke away to talk to Andy.

“This is the best I could come up with at short notice. We’ll get the mesh secured through the centre of the cell, but if either of them has more strength than they’re letting on, they may get through.”

Andy looked in at Lucas in his cell. The man didn’t seem particularly strong, but it was impossible to know for certain. “Okay, we’ll just have to hope for the best.”

“This cannot go wrong,” said Dr Gorman. “General Kane won’t tolerate us making a mess of this. More to the point, neither will I.”

“Doing a wee spot of decorating, are we?” said Lucas from inside his cell. “I wouldn’t mind a splash of cerise on these walls. Breathes a bit of life to a room, so it does.”

Andy went up to the glass of Lucas’s cell. “You’re going to get a roommate. Can we trust you to behave whilst we make the arrangements?”

Lucas glanced around his tiny cell and huffed. “Hope this new fella isn’t going to take up a lot of room. No room to swing a cat as it is.”

“The space you have is perfectly sufficient,” Gorman said. “And might I add that you placed yourself in there.”

“Aye, that I did, lass. I was looking for the nearest pub, but I must have taken a wrong turn somewhere.”

“More fool you.”

Rimmer nodded at Andy. “You ready?”

Andy nodded back.

Rimmer went over to the LED touchscreen beside Lucas’s cell and placed his thumb against it. He prodded through the menus and then typed in a passcode on the screen.

Suddenly there was a sharp hissing sound.

Andy turned to look into Lucas’s cell and saw that an amber substance was being pumped into the air from the ceiling. It quickly dissipated and mixed with the room’s existing atmosphere.

Lucas glanced upwards and frowned. “Did someone just let a cheeky fart loose in here?”

Then he began to cough and splutter. He clutched at his neck, began writhing.

“He’s fighting it,” said Rimmer. “Just give it a minute.”

They gave it a minute. Lucas dropped down to his knees, spat a wad of phlegm on the floor. Then he glanced up at them all and began laughing. He straightened up and got back to his feet. “You’ll need something a wee bit stronger than this gnat’s piss to put me down. I once smoked a reefer with Bob Marley. Not a fat lot else has been able to touch me since.”

Andy’s shoulders slumped. Sun, who had remained silent throughout the last several minutes, came up beside him and shook her head. “We should have expected as much. All of his tests came back non-organic, so why should we assume that he’s going to have a nervous system we can exploit with basic chemistry?”

Andy sighed. “So what should we do?”

“We should call it off,” Gorman said. “If we don’t have an effective plan of action then we need to go away until we come up with one. Mistakes are made by acting without proper thought or appropriate reflection.”

Lucas pressed his hands up against the glass and started mumbling something. His eyes rolled back in his head.

“What is he doing?” Sun asked her husband.

“I don’t know.”

Lucas’s words became louder. “…pen sesame. Open sesame…OPEN SESAME.”

The glass wall sprung aside on its rails, leaving Lucas’s cell wide open. The Irishman stood in the newly opened gap and grinned at them all. “Neat trick, huh? Of course, nothing beats a good bit of card magic, but a bit of variety never hurt anybody.”

Rimmer signalled his men who immediately took up their assault rifles and pointed them at Lucas. Rimmer was only carrying a sidearm—what looked like an Israeli Desert Eagle .44—but he quickly pulled it from its holster and pointed it. “Don’t fucking move!”

Lucas held his hands up. “Come now, I’m just being helpful. You folks wanted to come inside and I’ve opened the door for you and said thusly: “You handsome gals and gents are mighty welcome.”

“Get down on the floor,” Rimmer demanded.

“Such bad manners. These are my digs, not yours. Unless you want me to come out there and tie your limbs in knots and use you as a skipping rope, I suggest you stop with the threats, fella. That heroic beard of yours ain’t fooling anybody.”

Rimmer took a step forward and gripped his handgun tighter, his knuckles growing white. “I don’t make threats,
fella
.”

Lucas chuckled. “Look out! We got ourselves a badass over here. I wonder how much of a badass you were when you were bleeding out into the sand of the Iraqi desert. You know that Lewis’s mother killed herself after she got the news that her son had died. You must feel really bad about that.”

Rimmer snarled.

“Okay,” said Andy. “Let’s everybody calm down.”

“That sounds like a wise idea,” said Lucas, keeping his eyes on Rimmer and grinning slightly.

“Lucas? Will you let Rimmer and his men install a fence inside your cell? Will you try anything?”

“Not unless he keeps glaring at me with those beady little peepers of his.”

Andy turned to face Rimmer. “Rimmer?”

Rimmer kept his pistol up but glanced sideways at Andy. “I’m not about to trust this guy for a minute.”

“Then we have a problem,” said Andy. “Because he doesn’t seem to be all that bothered by your gun, and I would very much prefer that you didn’t shoot him.”

Rimmer lowered his gun by an inch, held it a second longer, and then lowered it all the way. “Fine, but if this guy even scratches his nose funny he’s getting a bullet right in the skull.”

Andy nodded. “Fair enough. Get your men moving.”

Rimmer instructed his men, who quickly got moving with the thick roll of steel mesh. Another couple of guys appeared with some steel rods and a power drill. By the time five minutes had passed they had drilled and bolted the steel rods to the left and right walls of the cell and secured the mesh fence to them both. Lucas was corralled against the back wall and was now trapped behind the mesh while the front of the cell was left open.

“Will the glass wall go back into place?” Sun asked.

Rimmer nodded. “It’s attached to runners. It will slide back into place once I log out of the cell’s control panel. We’re all set to move the other prisoner. You ready?”

“Let’s get this over with,” Gorman said. “The sooner we get the prisoner moved, the better. This has already gone disastrously.”

Andy felt a lump form in his throat as he contemplated moving the batling out of its cell. The nightmare of Samhain came rushing back to him and for a moment he was frozen to the spot.

Sun placed a hand on Andy’s back and rubbed.

Andy swallowed a lump in his throat and then spoke. “We’re ready Rimmer. Get it done fast. Lucas may have been cooperative, but I assure you that the batling won’t be.”

Rimmer nodded and got to work. “Handler, login and gas the cell. It may not have worked on the Mick, but I’m betting the fat pigeon won’t fare as well.”

The security guard, Handler, nodded obediently before logging into the system as commanded.

Rather than re-holster his .44, Rimmer kept it at his side, pointed at the floor. “We’ve all done this before,” he said. “It’s a routine crate job. Soon as the target is out, we move in and secure it.”

The men who had installed the steel mesh fence left momentarily and then returned with a large metal crate on casters.”

“Okay, we’re a go,” said Rimmer.

Handler released the sleeping gas into the batling’s cell.

The batling took note of the gathering outside its cell and begun cursing them all. “What are you looking at, slugs? Go and live your lives while there is still time. Soon you will be reduced to blood and giblets. You will bathe in the blood of your kin while your own heart turns to slurry. You will…”

The batling stopped cursing them and flapped around erratically. Its wings began to slow and the act of staying airborne seemed to grow more difficult.

“What…? How dare you! Pathetic…humansss… Die…”

The batling tried to stay airborne but its wings started to move like they were doused in clay.

It dropped out of the air like a stone and hit the floor with a
thump!

“Okay,” Rimmer shouted. “Move, move!”

Handler typed in the command for the glass barrier to slide away and the two other guards rushed into the cell. They threw a thick blanket over the top of the subdued batling and grabbed a hold of it. Together they managed to heave the batling upwards and started waddling backwards out of the cell. Handler left the control panel and stood beside the metal crate, holding the lid wide open.