The dreams were vivid and frightening, involving creatures invading his bedroom and eating him alive, then a sensation of being dragged through dark caves and a cry somewhere in the distance he thought sounded like someone he knew but couldn’t quite place.
The wall in front of his face when he eventually pried open his eyes was grey metal and not the four hundred-year-old oak panelling he was expecting. His head screamed as he tried to turn it and he shut his eyes again and grimaced as the throbbing ache increased tenfold.
Holy shit, what did I drink last night, he thought to himself, slowly turning over and finding his limbs were heavy and only partially obeying his commands.
He attempted opening one eye at a time and now, facing the other way, he found the room was small and also grey and metal and not where he was expecting to be. He forced himself up, ignoring the pain throbbing through his brain, and peered around through his one open eye.
‘What the fuck,’ he whispered, as it became obvious he was in a cell, and judging by the murmuring of an environmental system and general background hum, he was on a ship too. It was at this point he noticed it wasn’t bedding that was holding him down, as there wasn’t any; the gravity on this vessel was high, considerably higher than on Earth.
Forcing himself up to sit on the edge of the small cot, Ed felt around the back of his head where the pain seemed to be centralised. He found a small gash, matted hair and dried blood, then, sitting back against the wall, he attempted to compartmentalise the pain and piece together what he could remember about the previous evening.
Dinner with Pol and accountant Ian McMichael at the Black Bull, taxi back and a glass of Calvados in front of the fire in the library. It was the housekeeper’s day off, so she wasn’t around. Then it came to him, what had seemed like a part of a dream. The sudden uncustomary clanging of his seventeenth-century grandfather clock out in the corridor and the bedroom door crashing open. Dark figures silhouetted by the dim night light he left on in the en suite bathroom.
I think I shot one, he thought as he remembered snatching up the small pistol he kept in a bedside drawer. The drawer had only been open because he’d dropped his book into it before going to sleep. Then, nothing more – until now.
He began trying to piece together who would want to kidnap him and why. His first thought were the Moguls, but he discounted them because the ship was way too cold and they wouldn’t be able to tolerate that, especially with the higher gravity. He shivered and wrapped himself as best he could in the lone coarse blanket he’d woken on top of.
He’s dead, he thought, as Xavier Lake came to mind.
Perhaps someone I’ve pissed off in the GDA, was his next guess, but with the thundering headache, nothing came easily.
The dim lighting in the cell flickered slightly and the background hum changed pitch momentarily.
We just jumped, he thought, now able to recognise the telltales from all the different ships he’d been on over the last couple of years.
I hope this ship’s leaving a trail for others to follow, he thought.
‘Andy’ll find me,’ he said out loud to the empty cell. ‘He can find anything.’