Tales from the Triverse

Bombings: Part 2

London.
1973. November.

There was panic on the streets of London, emanating out from the portal station. The Joint Council tower above the station still bloomed black smoke into the sky, its ordinarily pristine, reflective exterior tarnished and cracked. The roads below were covered in shattered glass.

A short distance to the north, across the Thames, were the docks. The industrial, beating heart of the city for hundreds of years, it was normally a never-sleeping cacophony of cranes and chains, ships and dockworkers, trucks and trains and airships, conveyor belts and furnaces, loading and unloading. Instead, the workers had downed tools and were abandoning their positions. London was under attack once more, the creature from Palinor earlier that year still fresh in everyone's minds. This was no monster, but an explosion at the Joint Council tower - supposedly the most heavily defended building in the Kingdom. Word had gone out on all channels - television, radio, hurriedly printed newspapers - that an ultimatum had been issued. There would be more bombings.

And so everyone was leaving, looking for holes to hide in, home to return to, pubs to drown in. Anywhere off the streets, away from major buildings and gathering. The docks powered the city's economy and made for an obvious target. The docks emptied, workers departing en masse.

Except for one crew, who moved in the opposite direction. They were quiet, calm, going about their business swiftly but without fear. There were about fifteen of them, of varying ages. A small crew to run the entire dock, but enough for a single wharf. They were the single remaining point of activity in docklands that morning.

The cargo vessel drifted in with a final burst of its engines, gently nudging against the jetty. Mooring ropes were fastened and gantries swung into position. The ship was full of containers, though the crew were only interested in one. They offloaded only what was necessary to access their prize, which was then attached to the crane and winched onto dry land. The foreman checked the details, double-checked the seals, and signalled for it to be processed.

The dock was carefully chosen for providing a direct rail transit to the portal station. The container would be there within ten minutes.

*

The Kaminski residence.
Currently home to Zoltan Kaminski, his parents and Nisha Chakraborty.

There was always something more, another reminder to come of just how bad things could get. Perhaps the most surprising aspect was that Kaminski was still surprised - his cynicism tended to be laced with a thin vein of optimism; a last hope that perhaps the world would prove him wrong. It always disappointed.

The small, rotund television in the kitchen displayed live footage from the city centre. London burning. He'd been feeling mostly recovered from the encounter for the dopur, emerging from the vague stupor of its poison about a week prior. He could have gone back to work already, had he not other responsibilities. For the first week there had been the unusual situation of his parents looking after him, rather than the other way around - not something he'd experienced since being a child. It wasn't easy for any of them, his parents being old and barely capable of making a meal, and him more used to running the house. But they'd tried their best.

Nisha had moved in after a couple of days, taking the spare bedroom. She'd tried being at home on her own but the dopur's effects had lingered in her system for longer, and more severely. Waking in the hospital was only the first step of recovery: then came the out-of-body hallucinations, the constant drowsiness and a general clumsiness. Controlling one's limbs was not a simple matter following a dopur encounter, it had turned out.

Kaminski had got off lightly, having only brushed some fibres from Nisha's clothes while wrestling her out of the house. She'd had direct contact. Doctors at the hospital, and a specialist consultant with Palinese expertise, had clearly not expected her to survive. While he'd moved into the latter stages of recovery, which primarily felt like a mix of the flu and a terrible hangover, Nisha had spent that same time re-learning how to move, how to dress, how to make a cup of tea. That's why being on her own wasn't an option, especially with the health service having decided they were done with her.