Live and Let Drood

According to what this screen is reluctantlyshowing us…all the Hall’s weapon systems and defences were off-line. Shut down before the attack. This has to be sabotage, Eddie; the work of the traitor inside the family. I’m sorry; I know you don’t want to hear this, but it’s the only way this could have happened.”
    “Callan was in charge here,” I said. “I didn’t see him on the screen. I can’t believe all the defence systems could have gone off-line at once without his noticing. Unless…someone arranged for him to be distracted. Called away. So he wouldn’t be here when this went down.” I looked around the silent, deserted War Room. “Still no bodies. You saw my family die on that screen. So why isn’t there a single Drood body anywhere in this room?”
    “Maybe they took your family away as prisoners,” said Molly. “Ethel was gone, so they didn’t have their armour.…Maybe your family just did the sensible thing and surrendered?”
    “I suppose that’s…possible,” I said. “Droods stripped of their armour would have been in shock, especially after an attack like this. Some of them might have been captured.”
    “So some of your family could still be alive somewhere!” said Molly.
    “Why would our enemies want prisoners, if they hate us so much?”
    “Don’t be naive, sweetie. For information. Droods know things no one else does. Everyone knows that.”
    “They could have got far more information from the computers,” I said. “And our enemies went out of their way to destroy them. No. The whole point of this…was to destroy the Droods forever. To take us completely off the board.”
    “You can hope, though, can’t you?”
    “We always say about the bad guys: If you don’t have the body, they’re probably not really dead. Maybe that works for the good guys, too. If there are any survivors, Molly, if there are any members of my family left alive anywhere…I will find them.”
    We went back up and worked our way through the fallen Hall to what was left of the South Wing. To the Operations Room, a high-tech centre set up to oversee all the Hall’s defences and protect the family from…things like this. Once again the door was standing open,revealing a reasonably-sized room full of computer systems and workstations…usually run by a cadre of specially trained technicians, under the head of ops, Howard. He wasn’t there. Neither was anyone else. Everything in the room had been smashed to pieces with great thoroughness. Someone wanted to make sure that not one of these systems could ever be repaired or re-created. No way of telling whether anyone here had known the defences were off-line until it was far too late. There was a hell of a lot of blood, but no bodies.
    I made my way carefully through the wreckage, looking for something to give me hope. Molly stuck close beside me, watching my back and comforting me with her presence. And at the very back of the room we found the little surprise the enemy had left for us, or for anyone else who came looking, to find. Twelve roughly severed heads set on spikes. Six male, six female. From the expressions on their faces, none of them had died well. Some were still silently screaming for help that never came. I studied the faces carefully but I didn’t recognise any of them. I can’t say whether that made it easier or harder to bear. I knelt down and closed the wildly staring eyes, one set at a time. Because I had to do something. There were no torcs at any of the raggedly cut necks.
    The smell was pretty bad.
    “Did you know any of them?” said Molly.
    “No,” I said. “But then, it’s a big family. You can’t know everyone. Howard isn’t here.”
    “Why leave the heads like this?” said Molly. “As a warning to anyone who came looking? Or just to mark their territory, the bastards?”
    “It’s a sign of contempt,” I said. “To tell everyone that the Droods are nothing to be feared anymore. Well, they got that wrong. I’m still here. I will find who did this. I will kill them all, and they will die hard and die bloody. And for that I’m going to need weapons.”
    And so we went down again, into the family Armoury, set deep and deep beneath the West Wing. Except when I cleared the rubble away from the floor that should have held the entrance to the Armoury approach…it wasn’t there. I stared down at the bare dusty floorboards, which had clearly never been disturbed, and then lookedaround to make sure I was