Kal jerico sinners bount.., p.22
Kal Jerico: Sinner's Bounty, page 22
Clovik made to speak, but no words came. He shook his head and turned back to his control-cradle, leaving Zoon alone on the dais. Zoon flexed his hands, and felt the pull of his wounds, both old and new. He thought of the precious cargo contained in the ore-hauler’s bays. Just a bit longer, and it would be where it needed to be. As would he. He looked at the autopistol in his lap and carefully began to reload. His hands shook, as the last dregs of adrenaline fled.
‘Only a bit further now,’ he murmured.
A bit further on. And then he could rest.
CHAPTER TWENTY
ROAD TO PERDITION
‘This is it,’ Amanute said. The ratskin crouched beside the circular hatch to what had once been a communications shaft running between hab-zones. She lifted her torch, casting watery light into the shaft and revealing the ruin beyond.
‘You’re certain,’ Yolanda said, doubtfully.
‘This shaft runs all the way to the eastern node-gate. Beyond that is Perdition.’ Amanute ran her fingers through the tangles of decaying wire reverentially. ‘I used to play in this tunnel as a girl.’ She swung her torch about, illuminating their surroundings. ‘All this once belonged to my people. We tended it. Cared for it.’
‘You let it get mouldy is what you did,’ Yolanda said, lifting a dangling cogitator panel. ‘Look at the state of this place. It’s no wonder you ratskins get run out of these tunnels if you don’t put them to better use.’
‘We let the hive claim its own,’ Amanute said. ‘If the spirits wish for something to survive, it does. If they do not, it does not.’ She shook her head. ‘You know, the elders say that we did not have hive quakes, before uphivers began to dig down and falsely reclaim that which had been freely given.’
Yolanda bared her teeth. ‘You’re saying the hive quakes are our fault? Next you’ll be telling me the flooding down here is our fault too.’
‘It is,’ Amanute said, serenely. ‘You crack the bedrock, and make the spirits weep and bleed and so the sump rises. You kill this place, because you do not know any better. It has grown without you. Grown beyond you. As have we. And you punish us both for it.’
‘You’re starting to get on my nerves,’ Yolanda said. She took a step towards Amanute, but Scabbs interposed himself.
‘We should all calm down, I think. We don’t have much further to go. Right, Amanute?’ He glanced at her over his shoulder, and she nodded sullenly. Kal, watching from a safe distance, noted that her hand was resting on her knife.
He glanced at his partner. Yolanda’s temper was near to breaking point. She didn’t handle setbacks well, and she was impatient. All that added up to a mostly entertaining volatility, but something told him that they needed Amanute in one piece. A hunch, an instinct – he wasn’t sure. But he’d learned never to ignore that little voice, if he could help it.
‘Perdition is close,’ Amanute said, grudgingly. ‘Just at the other end of the shaft.’
‘Then we don’t need you anymore, do we?’ Yolanda said.
‘Stop it,’ Kal said. Yolanda turned, eyes narrowed.
‘Don’t try and order me around, Jerico. It won’t end well for you.’
‘I’m not ordering you to do anything. I’m merely pointing out that it might not be the wisest course of action to try and kill our only witch before we know whether we need her or not.’ Kal sat down on a chunk of pipe and rested a foot on Wotan. ‘Besides, she’s come in handy so far.’
Yolanda glared at him. ‘She hasn’t done anything except show us to a place we could have found on our own!’
‘And kept us from being eaten by every hive-beast between here and Red Shaft.’ Kal looked at Amanute, and was slightly pleased to see a startled look flit across her features. ‘I know what your singing means now, remember? And you’ve been doing an awful lot of it since we left Down Town.’
Amanute frowned. ‘The spirits are agitated. The hive is… in uproar.’ She shook her head. ‘Things from the lowest zones are climbing up. Something is herding them towards the settlements.’ She looked around and rubbed her arms. ‘I can feel their fear. Their anger.’
‘Muties,’ Yolanda said. She’d calmed down. ‘It’s the muties, isn’t it?’
Amanute nodded. ‘They are on the move. If you listen, you can hear them.’ She fell silent. In the quiet, Kal heard it. A distant ping of metal on metal. The underhive was always full of noise, even at its quietest. Sound carried forever and in strange ways down here.
He heard the pinging again, tap-tap-tap. He thought it was water at first, but it wasn’t. It was the sound of movement. Of many bodies moving through a distant pipe. Or perhaps not so distant. He glanced down at Wotan. The cyber-mastiff would have alerted him if the muties were close. He pushed himself to his feet.
‘We should get moving.’
Scabbs peered down the shaft. ‘We’ll have to walk the bikes from here.’
‘Maybe we should just leave them,’ Yolanda said.
‘We might need them, especially if we have to make a quick getaway.’ Kal began to push his bike through the field of rubble. ‘Come on. We’ll hide them at the other end of the shaft, where no one is likely to stumble on them.’
The shaft had been narrow and smooth once, meant only for enginseers or servitors. Now, like everything else in the underhive, it was a broken mess. The guts of what had once been the hab-dome’s major comm-network hung in corroded tangles or drifted gently in the trickling brook of leakage from the levels above. As they manoeuvred the bikes through the wreckage of the shaft, Kal fancied he could hear the faint echoes of the vox-signals still trapped in the network.
Unseen vermin scattered before them as they reached the end of the shaft. The node-gate rose out of the dark, its rusted angles still illuminated by solar generators connected to the exterior of the hive. In the cold light, Kal saw heaps of bone – not all of it from vermin – piled untidily in the corners, and wondered what had once lived here.
As if in answer to his question, Amanute said, ‘Shaft-haunter.’
‘What?’ Kal glanced at her.
‘We used to hunt them, when I was a girl. Like rats, but bigger. Wings.’ She tapped the side of her head. ‘They hunt by sound.’
Kal looked at Scabbs, but he shrugged.
Yolanda shook her head. ‘Never heard of them. Wouldn’t mind hunting one, though.’ She looked around speculatively.
‘These bones are old.’ Amanute sniffed the air. ‘If any of the beasts were close, we would smell them. Or hear them. They scream.’
‘Well, that’s something at least,’ Kal said. He looked up at the gate. ‘It’s closed. Scabbs?’
‘Bring that torch over here,’ Scabbs said, as he moved to the cogitator panel set into the frame of the gate. Using his knife, he prised the panel loose and peered thoughtfully inside. Tongue protruding from the corner of his mouth, he reached in and pulled out a handful of power cables and wiring. Amanute stared in awe as Scabbs began to cut the wires and strip the insulation.
‘You… know how this works?’
‘Of course. My mother and I – we used to live in a shaft like this. Took some figuring out, but I learned how to splice and dice with the best wire-jacks in the underhive.’ Scabbs rerouted several cables, and began to fiddle with the wiring.
Kal, who’d seen Scabbs ply his skills before, let his attentions wander. He heard Yolanda draw close.
‘I don’t trust her,’ she murmured.
‘So you’ve said.’
‘She could be leading us into a trap.’
‘And why would she do that? We rescued her, after all.’
‘Scabbs rescued her. We’re surplus to requirements.’ Yolanda sniffed and rubbed her nose. ‘Don’t blame me when she stabs us in the back and he goes along with her. Look at him. He’s practically besotted with her.’
‘He looks more nervous than anything else.’
‘He always looks nervous. All I’m saying is, we need to watch her.’ Yolanda tapped the side of her head. ‘She’s got plans, that one. She’s got the same look in her eyes that my cousins used to get any time the word “inheritance” came up.’
‘And all I’m saying is don’t borrow trouble. We can find plenty on our own.’ Kal looked at her. ‘You think Scabbs would run off with her?’ The thought bothered him more than he let on.
Yolanda smirked. ‘He ran off with me, didn’t he?’
Kal frowned. That was a cheap shot, and she knew it. Kal had been shanghaied off-world for a time, and he’d returned to find that Scabbs and Yolanda had formed an unlikely partnership. That partnership had quickly expanded to accommodate him, but it still stung to think he was so easily replaceable in Scabbs’ loyalties.
‘From what he’s said, he didn’t have much of a choice.’
Yolanda snorted. ‘He could have walked away at any time.’ She peered at him. ‘Are you… jealous? Is that it?’
‘No.’
‘It is. You’re jealous. You like having your sidekick all to yourself.’
‘Scabbs is free to make his own choices.’ Kal paused. ‘So long as I approve of them.’
Yolanda cackled.
Scabbs glanced at them. ‘What’s so funny?’
‘Nothing,’ Kal said. ‘Is it open yet?’
‘Does it look open?’
‘Well, hurry up. I don’t like just standing here.’
‘Tech-heresy takes time,’ Scabbs said, as he turned back to his task. ‘You can’t rush – ah!’ A fat spark leapt from the panel. Scabbs and Amanute backed away as the hatch gave a ponderous groan. Slowly, reluctantly, it cycled open, releasing a wash of dust and mildew. Cold air, blowing off a sump reservoir, wafted through the opening.
Amanute was through the hatch before anyone could stop her.
‘Go get her,’ Kal said, to Scabbs. ‘We’ll bring the bikes and hide them.’ He looked down at Wotan and jerked his chin. ‘You too. Help Scabbs.’
Wotan barked once and pelted after Scabbs. Kal and Yolanda hustled to wheel the bikes through the hatchway. The shaft beyond was as ruined as the one they’d just passed through. It had fallen in, in places, and thick, shaggy mould grew across the metal walls. They hid the bikes beneath a section of fallen wall, covering them in debris. Unless someone was looking closely, they wouldn’t be seen.
The air in this part of the shaft was cold and damp, and blew down through cobweb-choked circulation shafts set at regular intervals in the ceiling. Communications cables stretched along the walls and floor, all showing signs of water-damage.
‘Bones,’ Yolanda said, softly. Kal nodded. The floor was practically carpeted in them. The remains of vermin and larger beasts were mixed with those of humans. Most looked to have lain there for years. Others seemed unpleasantly fresh.
Here and there, along the walls, skulls had been mounted on lengths of scrap metal. They appeared to have been there long enough for the bone to go brown and for rust pollen to collect in the nooks and crannies. Kal examined one, out of curiosity, and found that a symbol had been carved into it. The others all had the same – or similar markings.
‘Ratskin totems,’ he said.
Yolanda frowned. ‘Guess she wasn’t lying after all.’
‘I was not.’ Amanute’s voice echoed down. Kal looked up to see her perched in one of the circulation shafts. She held a skull in her hands, her fingers tracing the symbol carved into it. ‘These skulls belonged to the leaders of the Seven-Shaft Clan. They made false overtures to my people, and tried to poison our wells and steal our children. So we set their heads at the edge of our territory, and bound their souls to this emptiness between our lands and theirs for all time.’
‘You never mentioned who your people were,’ Kal said. ‘Their name, I mean.’
She dropped the skull into his hands and leapt gracefully down. ‘Are. My people still live, though we have been driven from our home.’ She straightened. ‘We are the Shadow Root Clan.’ She turned as Scabbs made his way towards them, Wotan nipping at his heels.
‘Kal, you should see this.’
Kal and the others followed Scabbs to the end of the shaft. There had been more to it, once, but the walls showed signs of stress fractures and it appeared as if something had been sheared away, leaving the shaft to end abruptly. The ground fell at a steep decline, sliding down into the dark waters of an accidental reservoir. Along the jagged shore, a sparse shanty village had arisen – fishermen, or slime-sifters.
Above, Kal could just make out a sky of burst pipes and cracked substructure. Hundreds of waterfalls, some small, some large, dotted the expanse.
‘Hive quake,’ he murmured. ‘Ground must have shifted, and this whole section just dropped away.’
‘Here. Take a look.’ Scabbs handed Kal his monocular.
Kal lifted the monocular. Perdition rose out of the sump like a flower of steel and wood. The hab-zone was overgrown, feral. Thick, slimy waters cascaded down the inside of what was left of the dome after the quake had done with it and filled the ancient quarry pits and thump-shafts. Wild tangles of weed and doughy fungus floated atop the waters or clung to the walls. Subsequent hive quakes had further crumpled the dome, squeezing it all out of shape, so that the floor had buckled into artificial mountains and valleys. The roof hung low in places, and forests of fallen pipes jutted from the shallows.
The settlement extended from the stable part of the dome out over the water. Heavy pylons, hundreds of metres in length, had been sunk into the mire, and leagues of gantries spread out from each. Atop each gantry, hab-units and outbuildings had been erected. More gantries, bearing more buildings, had been added higher up, climbing the pylon.
Improvised palisades marked the southern edge of the settlement, rising from the waters. Parts of the wall were made from girders lashed together by lengths of chain, while other parts were constructed from scuttled boats or the broken remains of smashed hab-units. The wall rose and fell at odd intervals, following the crenulations of the sump-bottom, and the palisades extended partially out over the water.
Scows chugged across the sump, their crews seeing to the draining or evaporation of the excess waters. Thermal spikes were lowered into the deepest shafts and pits, there to boil away the liquid and lower the water levels. Thus, the hab-zone was slowly reclaimed. It would take years to complete the process, Kal knew. And there was always the chance that leakage from above or flooding from below would render the entire process moot.
In places where the water had been successfully drained, workgangs erected dykes of loose soil and rubble. Welding-lances were plied across these buttresses, sending up constant showers of sparks as reclaimed scrap was transformed into integral structural support. Stable ground was at a premium, and it was shored up as soon as it had dried out, to prevent it from slipping back into the sump.
Kal studied the long stretches of stabilised ground that extended to and from the dome’s entrance. They were tithe-paths, which made sense. You didn’t go to that sort of effort without a bit of recompense. He panned the monocular south, noting the processions of what he thought were pilgrims and holesteaders that crowded the paths to the various gates into the settlement. There were at least three gates that he could see. Shanty towns had sprung up around each, with tents and shacks crowding close to the palisade.
‘Bigger than I thought it would be,’ he said, at last.
‘The masked ones breed like vermin,’ Amanute said, as she sniffed the air. ‘The spirits are weak, here. This place is sour, now. It will soon wither and rot, and then be nothing at all.’
Kal glanced at her. ‘Meaning?’
‘It is not the place I remember.’
‘Good to know.’ He looked at Scabbs and Yolanda. ‘There must be hundreds of people down there. Should be easy enough to slip in without attracting attention.’
‘Well, let’s go then,’ Yolanda said.
‘No.’ Kal tossed the monocular back to Scabbs. ‘We’ll wait for a bit. Rest up. Get some sleep. Besides, I don’t think our quarry is here yet.’
‘How can you tell?’
‘That ore-hauler was sweating fuel. They’ve likely had to stop at least twice, to bleed air out of the fuel line if nothing else.’ Kal leaned back against the wall, his hands resting on the hilt of his sword. ‘Besides, if they were here, there’d be more activity down there. Right now, it looks fairly dead.’
Yolanda leaned over the edge. ‘Looks lively to me.’
‘Trust me. If Zoon were here, the Cawdor would be making a racket. Especially if he’s bringing weapons and ammo. Instead, they’re going about their business. That means he hasn’t arrived. But he’s on the way. So we wait.’
‘And if you’re wrong?’
‘Then a few hours more or less won’t matter. And I’d rather take my chances out here, than in a Cawdor hole. Especially with her.’ Kal indicated Amanute.
‘She doesn’t have to go in with us,’ Yolanda said.
‘I go where I wish,’ Amanute shot back.
‘Right now, none of us are going anywhere. At least I’m not. What about you, Scabbs?’ Kal looked at his partner.
Scabbs yawned. ‘I could use a break, actually.’
Kal gestured. ‘See? Scabbs is sleepy. You two do what you like. But we’re staying here, for the time being.’ Yolanda and Amanute traded glances, and then turned away from one another. Kal sighed. Hopefully they wouldn’t tear each other apart before Zoon arrived.
Kal crossed his arms and leaned further back. He whistled for Wotan. When the cyber-mastiff trotted over, Kal set his feet atop the dog’s back.
‘Scabbs, you have first watch. And maybe cook a little something. I might be hungry when I wake up.’
Scabbs stoked the fire. It was only a small one, but enough to cut the chill and cast back the gloom. He’d made it from dung-pellets and a dash of a promethium-alcohol blend of his own design, mixed together on a plate of curved metal. He gave the metal a gentle spin, stirring the flames.
