Read Online Chronicles of the Invaders 1: Conquest by John Connolly, Jennifer Ridyard - Free Book Online

to the South Bridge Vaults, the system of over one hundred chambers in the arches of the South Bridge, completed at the end of the eighteenth century. They had first housed taverns and the workshops of various trades, as well as serving as slum housing for the city’s poor. It was said that the nineteenth-century serial killers Burke and Hare had hunted among the residents of the Vaults for their victims, selling the bodies for medical experimentation. Then, sometime in the mid- to late nineteenth century, the Vaults were closed, and they hadn’t been excavated further until the end of the twentieth century, when they became a tourist attraction. Now they provided a hiding place for guns and, occasionally, Resistance members who had been identified and were being hunted by the Illyri, although most fugitives preferred to take their chances above ground. The Vaults were grim and dank and said to be haunted, although in Knutter’s experience it was only those who already believed in ghosts who were susceptible to such fantasies. Knutter himself had yet to encounter anything, either human or alien, that could not be felled by a sufficiently hard blow from his own head. So far, his forehead had not passed through the face of a supernatural entity.
    But it was Knutter who first heard the noises from the Vaults after a few too many drinks, and it had caused him to briefly reconsider his views on ghosts—and, indeed, drinking. But the noises continued to sound well after he had sobered up, and he had also recognized the curious burbling, clicking language of the Toads coming through the cracks in his basement wall. It was then that he had informed the Resistance. Once its leaders had concluded that Knutter was not simply hallucinating, further enquiries were made among its informers. By piecing together various pearls of information, a chain of events was constructed, and it was deduced that the Illyri had been tunneling with great secrecy under the city, and had come close to Knutter, and the Vaults.
    The Resistance leaders were furious: a major excavation had been carried out quite literally under their noses, and they hadn’t known. Their system of spies and informers had let them down. The Illyri had managed to keep their tunnels very quiet until Knutter’s keen ear had picked up on what was happening. The Resistance had concluded it was the Diplomatic Corps and not the Military that was behind the excavations. They had enjoyed little success in infiltrating the Diplomats, for they tended not to use human labor, and most of their forces kept their distance from humans, except when they were fighting them, or arresting them, or killing them. If the Military had been engaged in digging beneath Edinburgh, someone would have informed the Resistance. Only the Corps could keep such a project secret, aided, perhaps, by the Securitats.
    Katherine Kerr, the boys’ mother, had been a tour guide in the city before the Illyri invaded, and had passed on her knowledge of its secrets—among them the location of various concealed entrances to the Vaults, Knutter’s shop included—to her close family. This was why Paul and Steven had been chosen for the mission, and given instructions from the top, via Nessa, to investigate further. No point in hanging about, Nessa had said. Knutter was expecting them just as soon as they’d finished their tea.
    Now an Illyri patrol vehicle hummed by, its gray armor bristling with weaponry. It reminded Paul of a huge woodlouse. Its wheels were concealed beneath its frame, and its body was V-shaped to protect the Illyri inside by dispelling the force of explosives. It didn’t even have windows; its sensor array provided a detailed picture of the environment to its crew without exposing its occupants to harm. Like most of the smaller Illyri transports, it was powered by biogas produced mostly from animal waste, although the Illyri also used vehicles powered by electricity and hydrogen, the latter